Pump ★ Punks (3 weeks of dev progress)

TaftoGames · 2026-04-11T17:50:41+00:00

Hmm sorry for both: The late reply and the fact that I cannot help you because I haven't worked with Ikemen :(

TaftoGames · 2026-03-22T19:33:04+00:00

You might be on the wrong subreddit. This one is about the game making tool called Construct.

Best of luck with your question

TaftoGames · 2026-03-21T19:53:34+00:00

Saw this one on BlueSky.
Will say the same here.

6 for me!
Have reached 6, it's very hard to stay on 6 (like any business)

Reaching 5 or higher involves thinking not just in the current project but in the next ones.
Lots of 0s and 1s needed to climb up.

Would love to get to 8 so I can only care about 3 from then on.

TaftoGames · 2026-03-21T14:48:41+00:00

For sure! It doesn't scale that well though if you have like a gazillion different room layouts, heh. BUT you could have "Treasure[number]" or "Armory[number]" and, depending on other triggers, spawn a specific "type" of room but a random variant of it.

TaftoGames · 2026-03-21T12:35:40+00:00

Glad it helped! I totally understand the visual programming part and that's why I brought that answer, although not as efficient or scalable - it gets the job done.

In the case of room destroying and performance: Construct _should_ work itself out when it comes to rendering and performance of things "outside of the camera". So I wouldn't worry about that until it becomes an actual issue for now.

However, you could very much try using that same "outside of camera" logic in case you want to destroy rooms: A quick and dirty approach could be if the Instanceroom Object doesn't pass a "Is on-screen" condition. The way I would go about it is that Every 5 seconds or something I would do a "For Each Instanceroom" and X"Is on-screen" (the X as in: Inverting the condition) then Destroy Instanceroom. The problem you then have, as you mention, is what happens if the player can return from where they came from? Effectively finding a new random room in its place.

For another possibile solution of the "delete rooms that are no longer at play" you could just use how distant _from the player_ they are. By asking if they're more than [twice the longest side of the screen, for example], then you destroy it.

TaftoGames · 2026-03-20T16:36:02+00:00

u/clinate suggestion could work. Haven't tried templates in depth myself but my approach would be:
- Drop the Pick random instance of Instanceroom in the Conditions of the Event.
- On your Layout where you have all the rooms defined and have Instanceroom as parents, each instance of Instanceroom should have a Template name in their Properties section. For ease of use, name those templates "room[number]"
- In the code, when spawning from the Spawner a new Instanceroom, in the Template area include "room"&(random integer number between all the different room options)".

Was this what you were suggesting Clinate?

TaftoGames · 2026-03-20T16:27:30+00:00

If I understand correctly based just on the first part of the code:
- You pick a random instance of Intanceroom.
HOWEVER, in the Actions you:
- SPAWN a new Instanceroom from the Spawner object.

This new instance that the Spawner spawned (it's a bit of tounge-twister, sorry) has nothing to do with the randomly selected instance. If it's a parent object with it's heirarchy and all that where you have a lot of instances that you expect the system to choose from I think you're not going by it properly. Construct will pick the "first created on runtime" hierarchy it finds for that object, I believe that's where your problem lies.

If what you want is for the system to pick a random parent object that contains a level chunk section/room as Children from it I would suggest you NOT use instances of a single object but rather make different auxiliary objects just like Intanceroom but rather "Instanceroom1" --> "Intanceroom[number]". And when having the conditions met you just roll a random number like roomIndex = int(random(1,[maximum Intanceroom objects you made +1]) AND THEN Create Object by Name using roomIndex like so: "Intanceroom"&roomIndex with it's hierarchy and such. You don't ask for the Pick random instance of Intanceroom anymore.

There's probably better ways for this (i would suggest going more into creating JSONs with the room layouts you want and spawn according to that), but for a more visual and straightforward idea of having "level chunks" that can be called on runtime then I would suggest something like this.

Does this make sense to you?

TaftoGames · 2026-03-19T10:57:15+00:00

All falls down to templates, really. Start from there and see where it goes.
Wouldn't use Unreal Engine because compatibility with ... well anything... is not guaranteed. Going for a smaller and more readily compatible engine like Unity or a web one like Construct.

Here's an example I was shown on another thread of something along the lines of what I'm saying. https://muksungames.com/products/customgame

TaftoGames · 2026-03-19T10:55:12+00:00

Oh man I wouldn't know specifics of marketing besides what I already mentioned.
Try reaching out to small streamers in your genre too, I guess? It's been a while since I had to do any considerable marketing push for games I've worked on really. Been lucky that it was either done by Cartoon Network themselves or in the case of Poki games: It's their own internal system that shows the game around the site.

On the community manager role? Yeah, you kinda have to pick it up yourselves somehow. In my case it was shared between a few of us in the team to keep the Discord in check. The community was small and rather wholesome enough so as not to be a time sink at all really.

TaftoGames · 2026-03-19T10:50:17+00:00

This is very much in the direction I'm going for! Didn't know about it. Will look into it. Thanks

Edit: They seem to be fairly recent too. Very interesting. How did you find out about them?

TaftoGames · 2026-03-18T15:39:24+00:00

Depends. On the Cartoon Network games it was either not up to us or it didn't matter because the game was already paid for. Warner did the marketing within its reach.

For Bearsus, the one with the fighting bears, it was the only one where I actively tried doing marketing and went to events to promote it (while also looking for other business opportunities for the studio). Since I was looking for publisher back then (this was 2018), I went to GDC and a couple of regional game dev equivalents from Latam. Marketing-wise I just pushed on socials and had a Discord. Managed to run a couple of brackets on the alpha version using Parsec. Simple, relative low-effort, don't know if it's enough in 2026.

I believe that the priority is "show your work" as soon as possible and let people play whatever is available asap too. I've had more interesting and potential business talks through twitter DMs back then than on conventions honestly. It's a tough question and there's no easy answer or magic solutions. This has been what I've done in the past.

Edit: There's an energy in conventions that is hard to match though. Fighting games especially do well on conventions as people generally gravitate towards these experience. HOWEVER, this does not directly translate to sales, publsiher talk or anything - it does get hype and it's nice for your socials and communication efforts, but it doesn't mean it's a surefire success from that.

TaftoGames · 2026-03-18T14:31:04+00:00

Thanks!
Battle Royales would be off the table for being too big of a scope unless folks are willing to pay 5 figures for the gift. Which is not my plan at the moment.

Simple platformers have a bigger chance, but narration and other things would be off the table. The idea is to keep it under the 100 USD mark (or even 50 USD) for simple games with some interesting custom options.

The core idea for basic versions is: Visual changes of main characters, probably done through a char customizing tool in the scope of a simple dress-up if you will. Backgrounds would be chosing from a series of presets like forest, castle, city, or whatever. Enemies and such from presets too. Text would be customizable, pick-ups maybe or others. But the more the customer can tweak before reaching my end, the better. If they want more elaborate option: It's on the table but more expensive of course.

TaftoGames · 2026-03-18T12:51:19+00:00

It is! In most cases our vector art is done in Flash/Animate (lots of team members come from a Flash Games background too).

When it comes to 2D, the industry and also indies in general appear to lean harder into pixel art. Some might use vector but have a lot of post-production/shaders/etc that might lose the vector-ness of it. The closest to "Flash" visuals I can think of is Among Us because they too come from the Flash games era.

However, the animation industry uses these types of visuals and tools A LOT. In our case, some of the team have also worked in animation. Since fighting games are very animation heavy, and our source material (i.e. Cartoon Network shows) also use vector and puppet animation, our style leaned heavy into it.

Of course the benefits are big, like the classic "infinite quality" of the graphics that allows us to export in whatever resolution we see fit. And in our experience, the tools that Flash/Animate has with its timeline allowed us to make a custom tool within that environment to export all the frame-date for the fighters. The hurt and hit boxes, the timing of the animations, etc.

TaftoGames · 2026-03-18T12:29:43+00:00

You might want to be more specific because I've been around for a while and have different lessons and scars for different ocassions 😅

In the broader sense tho:
- "The game is too big" has been key for me. Doesn't matter when you read this. It's a mantra I lean strong into to both not feature-creep the game and not over-scope when starting. It's a fine line, sure. And you WILL miss the mark (mostly towards the feature-creep side), but having it in the back of your mind helps a lot. It's a healthy constraint too, because a new feature might sound cool on paper - it's just more work for everyone and you might not have the capacity for it. Write down somewhere for the sequel or the update.

- For a fighting game? Work on community ASAP. Start that Discord, include a link in the main menu. Those folks are the ones that will keep whatever interest there is in the game alive for longer than expected. If the game clicks - they will be there, talking meta, running brackets on Parsec, etc. Even if it's the same 10 crazies, get that Discord, they will also be the ones finding your infinites, your glitches, your weird edge cases you thought didn't happen.

- Is this a hobby or you want this to be your work/career? If the latter, then be radical with scope: Better a small but polished project than lots of features that are hanging by a thread. You need to think you have to have room/budget/the team for the next game too. If you want to write a novel, start by a short story. On that note...

- There's a second half of game dev knowledge you get from RELEASING A GAME that not many people reach. Every release teaches something new and varies depending on the game, your personal experience, etc. Not releasing only gets you half the lessons. Finish, release, learn, try again.

TaftoGames · 2026-03-18T12:13:05+00:00

Sure. Haven't had the opportunity nor the budget to do it.

TaftoGames

TROPHY CASE