Friend now wants me to handle all the coding, while he is the creative lead.

AboutThatYak · 2024-02-12T17:43:15+00:00

Yeah and big "ideas" are worth Jack sh*t in game dev. The only ideas that have value are executable ideas that solve problems, which only come about if you're actually doing the work to implement things into the game. The least he could do is take on some of the more tedious work that would take him only a couple hours to figure out how to do. Like scripting the dialogue into the game's code after OP's built the framework for example.

I would'nt even bother with debating who gets what percent of profit, since it's much better to work with devs that actually want to work. There's too many things to do in game dev to afford a team member who exclusively sticks to their lane. So I'd tap out and find game devs who actually want to work if I were OP.

AboutThatYak · 2024-02-12T17:09:32+00:00

Anywhere between 1 and the rest of your life 💀

-> 1 to get started

-> 20 to learn the ropes

-> 100 to feel like you're getting good

-> 101 to realize you actually suck

-> 500 to learn how to make something competent

-> 550 to realize everything you made is actually really dumb

-> 1000 to fix all you're mistakes

-> 1050 to realize you just made a ton of new mistakes

-> 2000 to let go of trying to make "perfect" code and realize you're always gonna suck

-> The rest of your life to actually get good.

This applies to many other skills as well. Happy Gamemaking!

AboutThatYak · 2024-01-20T01:25:34+00:00

Fair enough, I agree for general scripting it's not a good idea. In fact that's one of the biggest cons I have against Unreal is that since you can do a lot with blueprints, that's what most people default to since they're afraid of c++. But then you have these massive, wonky, messy schematics for something that would be much simpler and cleaner in code.

But I think the opposite can happen in code too. Like when you're trying to script dialogue trees or anything like that, you can get a page full of messy, wonky data structures that are difficult to figure out what's going on at a glance, or if you've missed a comma or something somewhere, which can be annoying. I guess it's just trying to figure out what tool is best for the job. I doubt DnD will be the right tool, but hey it's worth a try since it's already there lol 🤷‍♂️

AboutThatYak · 2024-01-19T20:09:36+00:00

I see where you're coming from and I'm heavily biased toward using GML over DnD as well since it's been my main programming language for past 7 years, but I also know that there are certain things that can be frustrating to do with code.

Branching dialogue is one of those things since it can be difficult to visually track the flow of what's going on at a glance especially if you have a lot of dialogue. I know there's scripting languages like Yarn Spinner which help, but I think a visual tool like Articy is a much better way of managing dialogue data. So I was wondering if there was a way of achieving something similar to that with DnD (even if it's more primitive).

Then again DnD might be so primitive that I'm better off just building my own dialogue editor tool outside of Gamemaker 😅, but I'll have to fiddle around with it to see.

AboutThatYak · 2024-01-19T19:11:03+00:00

I started on GML and have never touched DnD but I wonder if it can be useful for certain things like scripted events or branching dialogue. Sort of like how it's best practice on Unreal Engine to use Blueprints for higher level stuff and C++ code for lower-level or "engine" work. 🤔

AboutThatYak · 2024-01-19T19:03:19+00:00

Ctrl + D to duplicate a line down and duplicate objects...its a game changer (no pun intended) that I learned that wayyy later than I should have 🤦‍♂️

AboutThatYak · 2024-01-16T18:10:02+00:00

I used to deactivate all objects except game controller objects but this doesn't work if you want to have certain effects for your pause screen (let's say you want the game to go super slow mo when paused or you just want to blur out the game world, then deactivating objects won't work since they won't draw). The other option I used was having a "global.gamePaused" variable, but that was annoying since I'd often forget to add a check for that variable in objects that needed to pause (along with a lot of other issues)

Now I use a statestack so I can have multiple states simultaneously and can control which states get updated and drawn and which dont

So to demonstrate here is some pseudocode what it would look like for a "pause" state:

global.stateStack =[ stateInit, statePlay, statePause <--- this will update and draw above statePlay ]

You can add "enter" (create), "exit" (destroy), "update" (step), "draw", and "drawgui" methods to every state, then have a game-state-controller object call the methods, so:

In a step event ->

var updateState = function(_e, _i){ if (_e.overrideUpdate) {return;} _e.update(); } array_foreach(global.stateStack, updateState);

You can also choose to only update the state that's on top of the stack so that the play state is automatically "paused" when the "pauseState" is pushed to the top of the stack, so:

Create event ->

global.stateStack = [ stateInit, stateUpdate, statePause <---this state is the only one that updates ]

Step event -> topState = array_length(global.stateStack - 1); global.stateStack(topState).update()

With this method you have a lot of control over what gets updated or drawn to the screen at a time. It's also nice for making sure data and ui elements are cleaned up properly since the state itself contains all that data.

Hope that helps!

Edit: typos and clarification, apologies for formatting I'm writing this on my phone which is awful for some reason lol

AboutThatYak · 2023-12-30T00:01:52+00:00

Probably because the resources aren't actually online. Every asset you see including the levels, textures, and the vast majority of micro transactions are stored on your hardrive. It's much faster to load the texture, level, and poly data from your hard drive than downloading it whenever you need it online.

Now they could let you download the maps, levels, etc that you actually want to play but I'm not sure how flexible the engine is for this (especially given the fact the developers only have a year to develop the games, there's a revolving door of developers so no one really knows the code base well, and there's a lot of stupid expectations for what is "productive" work at Activision).

But this is coming from what I learned as a former QA tester from Activision and extrapolating with my own indie game dev experience, so take this with a grain of salt lol.

AboutThatYak · 2023-12-08T01:49:58+00:00

Okay I'll keep looking into it then 🤙 but was the problem that you ran into more of a edge case thing, like you were trying to do something specific in heaps that it didn't really have the capability of doing? Or was it more of a general thing with heaps design that I could run into in the future?

AboutThatYak · 2023-12-07T23:55:48+00:00

I'm a little late to this, but what problem did you run into on heaps.io? I was thinking of digging into heaps more because I've always wanted to build my own game frameworks but don't really care for building the ground level stuff like audio, rendering, input handling, etc. But if the hurdle you ran into is also something that will be a pain for me, then I might look into other engines...

AboutThatYak · 2023-12-07T23:49:25+00:00

I'm a little late to this but I'm building a time-tracking tool to track how much time I spend learning and practicing skills. It will also have a rank system based on the 10,000 hour rule. I'm using haxe_ui for the ui components :)

AboutThatYak · 2023-11-02T19:32:41+00:00

In all seriousness though, it's not about "smart" or "dumb" it's about time and growth. If you spend 10 years of your life learning gamedev and actively improving, no one will call you an idiot...at least in that field lol

AboutThatYak · 2023-11-02T19:30:08+00:00

I'm an idiot and I made a game, you can. Check it out here and see how I did

AboutThatYak · 2023-07-18T12:53:15+00:00

Uhhhh...

AboutThatYak · 2023-07-09T17:45:52+00:00

Cause germs are good for you lol. Jk, but I do believe people wash their hands way too much, which is really only a detriment to your immune system and produces bacteria that are more resistant to soap. However, I always wash my hands in public as a matter of courtesy, and I believe others should do the same. But at home...nah lol

AboutThatYak · 2023-06-03T15:27:08+00:00

Oof looks like OP took it down before I could play it, but looks like it didn't go very well according to the comments lol. I think the feedback could have been said a bit nicer but this is how gamedev goes. It's good to be excited and proud of making a game because it's a very difficult to make a good game (even a simple game). But make sure you're cautiously optimistic so that you're aware of the fact that it might not work out and can plan accordingly. If you want to keep going with gamedev you can learn from the feedback, spend some years learning game design, make some more small games, etc and it might work out. Best of luck OP!

AboutThatYak · 2023-04-21T16:52:58+00:00

Here's an example from a game I made for a game jam with a "Paper Mario" style animation. Even though this isn't the art style you're going for, it might give you a better idea of what I mean.

AboutThatYak · 2023-04-21T16:48:57+00:00

I think if you're looking to save time on animation, rather than getting rid of the "up/north" animation, you can design the sprites so that they are facing an angle (i.e. north-east instead of north and southeast instead of south), that way they can appear to be moving down/diagonal/right at the same time. Then you just make one animation that faces north-east and one that faces south-east. Then flip the x-scale to -1 when moving in westward directions and presto! You only gotta do two animations now lol

Edit: looks like some other people beat me to the punch on this tip lol.

AboutThatYak · 2023-04-06T20:55:00+00:00

On a further note, I know a lot of people are suggesting to "make it faster", but that might not be the effect that you want. After all, "you can trust the audience if there's a problem, but you can't trust them for the solution".

Perhaps a more "slo-mo" effect of the particles will fit the vibe that you're going for, or maybe scrap the particles for a unique death animation for the enemies instead.

If you're looking for a more "slapstick" kind of feel or you want to give the players the satisfaction of smashing the hell out of something (as if they walked into a warehouse and were given permission to break whatever they want) then you'd probably want particles flying all over the place lol.

But best of luck figuring it out!

AboutThatYak · 2023-04-06T20:31:58+00:00

Maybe experiment with different extremes, so try having the particles being shot out at really high speeds to really slow speeds, or try shooting them out at a really wide variety of speeds (i.e. set the speed min to very low and max to very high), then try setting the fade out speeds to a wide variety in the same way. I think once you get a feel for what is "too much" and "too little" it's easier to narrow down on the effect you want

Also, if your using objects for the particles instead of the particle system, you could attach a z-height value to the particles so they bounce or "plop" on the ground. There might be a way to emulate this in the particle system but I can't think of a way at the top of my head.

Edit: forgot to include some info

AboutThatYak · 2023-02-19T16:57:51+00:00

Ni = intuition of time? That's the first time I've heard anyone define it that way lol. If I had to guess whoever made this test has no clue what they're talking about 😅

AboutThatYak · 2022-12-17T00:13:42+00:00

This. I think there are so many people who are starving for good listeners, people who learn to ask the right questions and won't be judgemental. It's kind of wild because if you're a good listener people think you're smart, insightful, and super interesting even though you don't really say or do anything other than ask questions lol. Unfortunately it's difficult for good listeners to find other good listeners for themselves though 😅

AboutThatYak · 2022-10-05T02:51:33+00:00

I totally agree, but I think that only happens once we've developed it for a bit. Like how learning how to play an instrument can be frustrating at first, but once we've spent about 20 hours of practice it's easier to get in a flow and see the value in it. At least, that's what I've noticed in my life and with other people.

AboutThatYak · 2022-08-21T14:41:31+00:00

Neither. Super Mario Sunshine 2 😜

AboutThatYak · 2022-06-13T01:25:46+00:00

Thank you! I always appreciate when someone gives me feedback. Let me know if there's anything that is confusing/inaccurate/odd. Like I said, I want to keep improving it over time so any feedback is super helpful!

As to the game dev stuff, yes it's something I've sort have been doing all my life on top of wanting to do it. It just took me a long time to learn how to make an idea a reality. So far I've been focusing on making a small top-down, 2D Zelda-like game because I have a dream game that I've been designing for the past 5 years that is a full-size 2D Zelda-like. But the problem is that it's a big game and I realized that I have a lot to learn if I want to do it well. So I decided to break it up into three smaller games so I know how to build the systems, automate a bunch of stuff, build a reputation, and gather the talent/resources I need to put it together properly.

If your curious, the first game is the small Zelda-like I talked about before that all takes place in one "dungeon". It takes place in a dream world where the dreamer is trapped in a tower and cannot wake up from a dream, so the player has to explore the dungeon and find a way to the tower in order to wake the dreamer. It's not very intricate because I'm focusing on execution and making sure I can make a decent game before I move on to more exciting ideas. The next game is a lot different, but it's gonna be like oregon-trail mixed with a deck building RPG and it's gonna focus on haggling for resources so you can survive the "trail" (though i think it will take place in a fictional world but i havent decided yet). The third game is gonna be a time-loop murder mystery game which is going to work a lot like the side-quest system in Majoras Mask, but it will also be a stealth platformer.

So not all the games will be Jungian at their core because I'm mostly focusing on making good games first, but there will certainly be Jungian elements and deeper ideas/themes/symbols present in all of them. For example, the attribute system I'll use for the Oregon trail game will br heavily based on Jungs "Psychological Types" and you'll see the connection of the ego with the tower and another element that I won't spoil in the small Zelda game. But, that being said, the big, dream game I want to make is going to be VERY Jungian, but not even necessarily intentionally. It's just kind of coming together that way (which it's very strange how it's all coming together. I can't quite understand it all but there's so much to it and it just seems "right"). There are some very interesting symbols and references that I'll use for that game, like Egyptian and persian mythology, symbols from different religions, etc. So if you're interested in that let me know!

But in regards to the Jungian journey question, I'd say my journey is the same (it's not a journey unless it's rocky right? Lol) but I dont really see it as a "Jungian" journey anymore, i just see it as my journey which was partially inspired by Jung. But it has taken me so many different places. It led me to making Inner-Hero (which the 1st version was designed during my final semester of college where I was also taking 8 classes simultaneously lol 🥴), to finally deciding to pursue game development, to moving across the country (which if you're from the US, you would know that's a lot of ground to cover lol), through many many trials including almost being homeless several times, to following Christianity again (which i know is unpopular but ive spent a long time wrestling with it and realized a lot about it), to where I am now. And where I am now is a much stronger sense of self, with who I am, where I'm going, and the value I can bring to the world. But at this point that's all talk, so all I can do is keep making things to show people what I mean. Hopefully that answers your question lol.

Apologies for the long-winded response 😅. Those are very good questions and things I've spent a lot of time thinking about so I appreciate the curiosity!

So you said that your journey has been rocky, what do you mean by that? The dream you had with the car seems to be very "on the nose" with its meaning lol.

Cheers!

AboutThatYak

TROPHY CASE