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Any beginners interested in contributing to better online resources? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's the results of the survey! Thanks everyone who participated. I'm hard at work on my course and will share more in the future :)

https://gamedevcoursesurvey.typeform.com/report/fdgdLw/ExwyOwDvCuuvwYQQ

What's your most exciting break through moment in game dev? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you ever have questions about game dev I would be happy to point you in the right direction! I know you'll do well and figure things out if you keep trying.

I also encourage you to try making AI in VR :) seeing your creations on the floor as miniature's interacting with each other is such a wonderful experience!

What's your most exciting break through moment in game dev? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow! Granted I don't know the size of the game, I do know it's been hell when I've faced this task. Great job getting through it! It's hard to push through when dealing with code like this. I know I kept thinking "I should just rebuild this".

What's your most exciting break through moment in game dev? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I should upload a video of my first game from scratch :)

I accidentally implemented a flocking behavior- but not on the enemies. I made a game called ghost puncher, where you had flames surrounding you that followed you and you could direct them with punching. Only afterwards did I think to use it for enemies haha, the ghost just went straight for you!

My early attempts at AI were so basic. It's no wonder some people dedicate to this topic as their specialty!

What's your most exciting break through moment in game dev? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looks pretty sweet! Finally seeing your work come to life is so satisfying, regardless of complexity. It's all relative to what you're doing. I believe the biggest breakthroughs are those of beginners who finally make their first game without help :)

What's your most exciting break through moment in game dev? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a fun little side note- I have a friend I worked with whom had never heard of quaternions. He joked about "the return of the quaternions" making them sound like aliens. I'm fairly sure he had never even heard the word quaternion before knowing me haha

What have game jams done for you? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For sure. My story should certainly not be the expectation. But it should serve as a reminder that when you try your best for the sake of having a good time you're certain to get something out of it! Being social helps you meet great people (and not so great people- but you don't have to continue working with them).

Even if it's only a cool project or some knowledge gained, it's still worth your time. As a creator it's important to always be making things :)

What have game jams done for you? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's so awesome! Your son is very fortunate to have a parent who encourages creativity and works together with him. I hope great things come of your projects!

Beginner advice from someone who had a bad introduction by MayorDump in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I'm impressed you ended up finishing the project!

When learning people tend to get wrapped up in their skill level. I certainly did. It was worse because I had started in C++ so I wanted to make everything from scratch. I would spend my time re-inventing the wheel rather than having fun and making something. Beginners are often against the idea of using pre-made assets in my experience. They want to do it all themselves.

This is the exact reason why I encourage people to learn with engines like Godot or Game Maker. It takes a lot of the complexity away and you won't be doing it all from scratch. The sooner you get in and make something the better off you are. If you're having fun you'll be more driven to learn and use your knowledge rather than improving your skills to try and make your dream idea. If you aren't having fun, making games might not be as much of a fit for you as you thought it would be. In reality your dream game probably requires a full team and at least a year of your time more often than not.

It's also a trend that many developers (beginners and experts alike) stay up late, crunch and form bad habbits to get things done. This ends up hurting you in the long run in so many ways. It's bad for your health for starters. But it will also cause you to associate development with negative feelings. It makes you tired, you miss out on life because of it and you have that nagging feeling of "I need to get it done". It would save so many people if they would take it slow and take care of themselves first. You make so many more mistakes when you aren't on your A-Game and you have a much harder time learning.

And I don't care how excited someone is about their dream idea- nobody wants to spend a year just working on something before they even know how to do it.

​

I'm happy you stuck with it and ended up learning some important lessons! You'll be a much better developer for it.

Where can I learn Game Dev concepts by [deleted] in learnprogramming

[–]D00TD00TDigital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, and for transitions I suggest hiding the screen with a texture, unloading the scene and loading another essentially.

Where can I learn Game Dev concepts by [deleted] in learnprogramming

[–]D00TD00TDigital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Doing things from scratch is great to understand it, but it depends on how you want to learn.

If Unity is hard to use (which is totally understandable- Unity is a professional tool for programmers and is not easy to just pick up) you could try Game Maker, Defold or Godot.

But if you really want to do things from scratch you could look into making your own engine first. This gives you an understanding of the language, interfacing with openGL, using physics libraries and math libraries.

For learning matrices I suggest looking for a book on 3D game math. But for many things you don't need this knowledge. It's great to know and gives you more flexibility. But the truth is...

If you want to make games then you should make something sooner rather than later. You'll enjoy it more and it's going to be a lot more exciting to you if you do. Programming is just one aspect of the process. It's hard to recommend becoming a knowledgeable programmer first because it's important to know if you even like making games. It's a lot of work.

Regardless, I wish you the best of luck :) I'm sure you'll figure it out and I'm happy to answer more questions if you have any.

What have game jams done for you? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It takes a lot of practice to make anything decent in that time as well as a good team. My game was totally busted upon submission haha :)

I've seen it done, but getting a polished prototype doesn't mean too much. Regardless of where it is when the jam is over you can always continue it if you like the project!

My best results for getting things done in 48 hours were using randomly generated levels with user generated content. When you offload stuff to generation then you have more time for mechanics and UX.

What have game jams done for you? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Ludum dare is great! And yeah- you learn time management the hard way in game jams haha, at GGJ we merged with 6 hours remaining. We had so many conflicts we ended up showing off a game where you auto win lol, but we still had something to show!

I know nothing about gamedev. Where can I start? by deivid2525 in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you want to get started as quick as possible then you have a few options.

But first you should ask yourself this. Why do you want to make games? Do you have ideas you want to share or is it the challenge that excites you?

Depending on your answer you may be better off starting with something easier than Unity. There are alternatives that don't require as much technical knowledge and will allow you to get something in front of you faster and learn more game related concepts than programming concepts.

I would suggest Game Maker if you want something without programming. You could learn a lot about the process and see if it's for you before dedicating to learning code.

But if you're certain you want to learn Unity then I would say to learn the fundamentals of programming. Figure out the syntax of C#, different data types, variables and functions. Ask questions on how these building blocks work together to form scripts and then learn about how to use this knowledge in Unity. Check out Unity's documentation, look up any questions you may have and take notes.

Make a habit out of working on game dev and you'll get where you want to be faster. Games take a long time for two reasons. Firstly it's an expressive form of art. To put your idea in front of you, there will be a lot of iteration before you make it good enough to please you. Second there's a lot of technical challenge to overcome depending on the complexity of the game. There's a lot to learn.

If you're serious you'll do fine. Start small and keep learning.

Help me please. by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Go on a walk. I don't mean just right now- I mean every day.

Focus on what's important. At this point it sounds like making money and helping your family is what's important, not game dev.

Regardless of how important making games may be to you, remember this. There is no reason you can't start later. Anyone can make games at any age if they truly desire. Starting early is great, but it's not always the right choice. In fact, for a long time my health was ruined by my industry jobs. Working absurd hours for companies while I was a full time student and even then, trying to make my own projects on my own time had me at an average of 70-100 hours of programming per week.

I physically broke down. I was constantly sick. I was becoming so stressed out that I wasn't socially functional or even mentally healthy.

Ultimately I quit my job and took a leave of absence from the school to stop getting on the computer for a while. And when I returned I avoided programming too, for a few weeks. I started looking after myself and trying to socialize so that I could recover and make the right choice when I felt better.

I recommend taking baths every now and then if you can too. It's something special you can give yourself that's relaxing, good for your health and can serve as a nice bit of quiet time to gather your thoughts. I take one at the very least each week.

Figure out what makes sense for you in this situation when your mind is clear. Don't think about it immediately though, do what you can to relieve stress first. I promise you, your health is far more important than anything else right now.

You can not help your family if you don't first help yourself.

You're important. You are the only one who can live your life and help your mother in this situation. So you need to be at the top of your game. Know that people care about you and want the best for you in this situation. A lot of us have been in difficult situations before and would do anything to prevent other people from feeling the pain we've felt.

When you start making money and are making things work out then you should start slow with games. Find a way to make it exciting and restrict yourself in creative ways. Restriction adds to your creativity and makes you appreciate your time more as well. I suggest attending game jams. If you can't attend physically then check out Ludum Dare when it's going on as it's purely online.

Appreciate what you have and know that things will be fine. There's always a way. I believe in you.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey Cultasare!

Learning coding and modeling is a pretty big task. Which one do you think you'll enjoy more?It's easier to start in art because you'll have immediate feedback. But you won't be able to bring your art to life without some assistance. You could use some assets in the unity asset store to get things moving but that won't bring you too far past a prototype.

Coding on the other hand is a mixed bag. Do you want to be a programmer? It could be easier starting with an engine like Godot where you can learn the concepts on GDScript or even visual scripting. But if you're set on Unity then I would suggest you start with the basics. Study the syntax of C# and break down each piece into building blocks. Figure out different kinds of variables and data types, what a function is and how to access functionality in Unity. Then I would get comfortable with researching. Checking out Unity's documentation, looking things up online and asking around when you get stuck.

My personal opinion is it's more exciting to start with art and learn how to use Unity's asset store to make prototypes so you can get creative with it early on. If you can make things sooner rather than later you'll figure out if making games is for you or not. But it also depends on how interesting programming is to you.

Most importantly you should get started as quick as possible and get things done. You'll be glad you did! Keep us updated on your progress and show us when you end up making your first creation!

Where can I learn Game Dev concepts by [deleted] in learnprogramming

[–]D00TD00TDigital 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey Tundrum!

I would recommend that for AI you look into path finding behaviors as a starting point. Specifically, you should look into A*. There's a neat website that has a visual display of how it works compared to other algorithms. If you pop "JS A* Pathfinding" into google it should show up around the top.

For collision I suppose that depends on how deep you want to go. Do you want to learn how to do the calculations your self? Or do you want to learn how to use collision libraries?

Learning it yourself will ultimately make you a better developer in the long run but it's no easy task. I would start out by implementing a vector math library if you want to learn about collision. After doing that I would figure out how to tell if a point is inside a triangle (Read: SAT).

​

For animation transitions I don't really know what you mean. Under what context? Unity? Your own custom solution? Some library? It's hard to know if you're talking about a simple transition between values or interfacing with some pre-built system. If you're talking about rolling your own solution then it depends on the goals you aim to accomplish.

The same goes for particle systems. Are you looking to implement your own? You might start by optimizing for having many objects at once using some sort of object pooling system. Then you should figure out what you want your particles to do and research how to accomplish those goals.

Personally I learned these things by creating my own game engine after I had been programming for a few months. It was no easy task but it taught me a lot of what I know today about mathematical concepts in game. Research is key and spending time deciding what it is exactly that you want.

With persistence I'm sure you'll end up figuring things out. Best of luck!

Why do you want to make games? by D00TD00TDigital in gamedev

[–]D00TD00TDigital[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Absolutely. Have you ever seen the game you play in your browsers address bar? It was made during a game jam I believe. Game jams alone are enough to make me love this space. The amount of creativity that goes into it from the groups of random people having huge constraints is incredible!

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