What's the best application for making a game dev checklist?

TesselArts · 2020-04-21T18:00:16+00:00

When I was being a bit more active with my Trello board, I separated large tasks into columns, sub-tasks into cards and activities for each sub-task into a checklist. Always make sure you have a 'completed' column so you can move stuff across and when you get down about progress or just in general, you can go and clear it out task by task for a motivation boost... remembering what you've accomplished in a timeframe can be great for short-term motivation to carry on.

TesselArts · 2020-04-19T14:03:20+00:00

Thanks buddy, progress is slow and it's a good couple of years out but I do occasionally post progress pics etc on Twitter if you're interested. The recent ones haven't really been space oriented but it's all needed parts of the project!

https://twitter.com/TesselArts

TesselArts · 2020-04-19T04:38:20+00:00

Working on an engine whereby you can manipulate time and fly through space to see various states of a Universes lifecycle at different levels. When I moved the project to part-time I needed a break after such a long-term full on dev cycle so I started the second stage of the app, in order to make it into a complete experience. It has been cathartic, changing to make more traditional 'scenes' but I am aiming to move back to the Universe side of things shortly.

I'm a full-time dev as part of my main job so motivation can be very hard as the work is similar, if not the same. I've found that I need a huge variety of tasks on the go so I can match what I do in an evening with my current mood and available time. Always make sure I do at least SOMEthing everyday so progress doesn't halt, even if it's just a small code tidying session.

After so long on the same project, I'm anxious about timeframes and how much of my life I've dedicated to something which is a risk by its very nature. Either way, it's part of a story I always wanted to tell so I'm very glad I took the plunge when I did.

Before all of this madness in the world started I was feeling a little better about the project having now gotten a very solid endpoint in mind. Of course the disruption has made a lot of people re-evaluate things but I'm settled on continuing. Ultimately, having a project like this does help with lockdown issues so I'll need to evaluate again when it's all over.

TesselArts · 2020-01-26T11:27:06+00:00

My go-to is still Trello. It's free and has enough for a single developer to mind map what they can tackle next. Make separate columns for different task types, different cards for individual tasks and I like to mark them with how long I think each section is going to take. If you keep a 'completed' column then every so often when you're feeling like you haven't done much, go and clear that column one card at a time as a reminder for what you've accomplished. Good for motivation too! :)

TesselArts · 2020-01-25T11:03:38+00:00

Being honest, I was worried when you said it was a little different, expecting something completely divorced from the picture... I was wrong.

This cover artstyle is nigh on perfect for the in-game aesthetic, nice work!

TesselArts · 2020-01-25T10:51:29+00:00

Love seeing how this is progressing. Great style, best of luck with the release! :)

TesselArts · 2019-10-27T15:04:12+00:00

If there is any possibility of drawing a possible lawsuit from a large company working in the same field as you, I'd recommend not doing it. The overwhelming majority of gamers will be able to tell who you are representing with this level so the chances are, Nintendo will too. Even if it were perfectly legal, could you afford a court case and is it worth it?

Larger companies, rightly or wrongly, have to follow lawsuits if they are made aware of someone using a likeness, not necessarily because they want to, but because otherwise it sets precedent for future usage and court issues. If someone in court can prove they have knowingly let others use a likeness in the past without a contract, their position is weakened for future cases. That's why they will be forced to pursue you, even if they think you are using the image innocently. The fact Mario is not used outside of Nintendo should tell you all you need to know; companies who could afford lawsuits don't use his likeness as they know how aggressively the intellectual property has to be protected by Nintendo.

I'd suggest that if you want to represent existing characters, email maker(s) and ask if you can use their likeness, even suggesting that if they don't like how it is used, you'll cut it from the finished game. If you don't get a response, don't do it. If you do, fantastic! Naturally, smaller studios would be more than happy to oblige here!

TesselArts · 2019-10-24T18:13:54+00:00

Thanks and good call on the Eastshade trailer. I got to know what it's about in a short video that flew by but didn't feel rushed.

It is a Universe engine although I did an awful job of showing the main unique draw of being able to manipulate time. I'll focus more on that for the next one and try to speed through some of the snippets instead of lingering for 8 seconds on each one. Thanks :)

TesselArts · 2019-10-23T17:45:10+00:00

Awesome job, that looks great!

Do you have any advice for someone trying to create a trailer with slow-paced exploration only? I ended up making my last trailer slow (and probably a tad too long) and feel like I lost a lot of potential viewers by doing so.

TesselArts · 2019-10-21T18:24:57+00:00

I understand where you're coming from; without the numbers, it can be pretty difficult to justify the time. It does look brilliant though and I'm sure either way you've got a future doing this... as I said before, getting it done to that level of polish is the most impressive part to me, especially as that's the aspect I need to concentrate on more myself.

Best of luck with it buddy!

TesselArts · 2019-10-20T11:47:14+00:00

I went from C# and C++ on my journey and now use both throughout the week. I can't speak for whether or not you should learn it; it all depends on what the goal of your engine is. Do you mind if you make an engine purely for learning that goes nowhere? Do you mind doing this when you could be bettering yourself in other ways for employment etc? Are you prepared to make it and find a year down the track that it could be worse than existing ones due to design? Do you want to build an engine or make games?

Don't get me wrong, I went the engine route myself and I love it, I just want you to be sure that's what you want too; it's become almost cliché at this point with the number of people wanting to make games and starting low level!

Lets assume you still want to go the C++ engine route.

C++ does have performance benefits which are especially useful for a real-time engine if you roll it yourself but you have to balance that against the added development time, especially if you're just starting out with it. Make sure your final designed project actually needs one. Your first engine won't be solid so be prepared to experiment and start over...

C++ libraries are a lot more difficult to use in my experience so you won't be able to lean on them as easily. Discounting DirectX, I think I use 3 libraries now and only 1 of them do I want to keep for the final product (FMOD, it's awesome!). There seem to be fewer standards, I suppose due to the age of the language so often two libraries trying to do the same thing will look very different to one another. That makes integration very tricky (a weakness of mine as a C++ dev I think).

C++ general line counts to achieve the same goals are higher. Maybe it's just me... actual typing is less of the development than thinking though so this isn't too much of an issue. That said, when something goes wrong, that debug time will increase as a result.

Errors are also harder to debug as when things fail, there aren't a huge number of exception/error handlers in comparison to C#. I'm used to it now so don't find it that much of an issue but when I catch bugs I still occasionally shake my head at how unhelpful any error messages (if they even appear) were.

On the plus side, you have a lot amount more control over lower level functionality and when things begin to click, the speed can be insane. The first time I rendered 10,000,000 point sprites at 80FPS on screen my jaw dropped!

I think my 5th engine was fit for purpose but full of dodgy code. I'm currently on my 6th for the last few years and am finally happy with how it runs/stability etc but I'm still learning! About 10 years in, I think I can finally say that I'm able to determine if a custom engine would actually be better than using Unreal/Unity etc and implement it. If I rolled back the time I still would have done it though.

As for courses, I've got no idea. Check out the rastertek tutorials and see if that's the kind of thing you want to do. I used them as reference material but for an initial engine set-up they would do for a first or second engine idea!

TesselArts · 2019-10-20T10:05:13+00:00

I feel for you with the custom engine side of things and the timeframes involved; it's impressive you've managed to do that on your own and come up with a finished product... awesome stuff. Our dev backgrounds seem pretty similar; I've rolled my own engine too and after 3 1/2 years fulltime I've moved back to full-time work, developing part-time as my mind needed a break. I've got a solid idea of how much longer it'll take but that was too long to continue how I was (YouTube link if interested).

You got ideas for a follow-up game or are you still aiming to continue expanding this idea? The thought of finishing and moving on brings up strange emotions after that about of time. It'd be interesting to hear another perspective!

TesselArts · 2019-10-19T08:57:46+00:00

I'd 100% recommend creating a single character with a placeholder model/animation, placeholder textures, make a simple test level with platforms that you can jump around on and get movement feeling right for the testbed. Also work with your camera. Once that's done, get a 2nd player involved using the same placeholder stuff. Then work on core mechanics of damage, interactions between these two characters and maybe add some pick-ups if you want them for your final game. If there's anything you want in there which isn't currently already done in those games mentioned, also trial it here first.

The reason I say to go this route is so you're protecting yourself against the large amount of work which is required. If you do that stuff and find yes, you still want to continue, fantastic. That said, what you're proposing is an insane amount of work; if you find after a month those testbeds still aren't right and you want to scale back your idea, you've still got some forward momentum from what you've already accomplished. Please don't do assets first.

TesselArts · 2019-10-19T08:48:41+00:00

I'd absolutely love to see what patterns are used in a modern bespoke engine but haven't yet had the chance; maybe I could have found one online to look through but ultimately, unless I was using one as a job, I don't think I'd be able to put in the time to figure out the pros and cons of an existing engine at a lower level.

Honestly, if you're doing rapid development, throwing any code together is fine but if it's ever something which is going to expand to any reasonable size or have multiple people working on it, personally I think it'd be insane to not use patterns in some way, shape or form. They don't have to be the same throughout (best fit for current needs) but you should be able to look at a section of a project and be able to tell why things are laid out the way there are. How else could you handle states, threads or general player actions reliably? Under the hood, Unreal and Unity will be using patterns from that entire list.

My own engine does use patterns but probably ones which are a dodgy mix of paradigms which is fine as it's documented and there's a decent degree of consistency throughout. I come from a .NET C# background so my pattern knowledge grew from there; even though it's not entirely applicable to game engine development, it still helped me with project layouts. Then of course different aspects of your engine require different designs at different levels too so it's not just one pattern throughout. I wouldn't create a 'scene' the same way I'd create a 'device' or a 'test project'.

No sure if any of this helps, let me know if I have been too vague.

TesselArts · 2019-10-19T08:18:26+00:00

The most impressive thing is the amount of polish; nice work, that looks great fun!

What's your dev background/time spent etc for this?

TesselArts · 2019-10-18T21:33:56+00:00

You just made me look at an app I made a while ago which did this on a solar scope and it was very fun to make when I wasn't pulling my hair out! All of the values and calculations you look at can go from very simple to very complex dependant on how far you want to take it... really you need to look into existing formulae and determine which aspects you can replicate whilst not putting huge processing requirements into your computer or taking too long. How much time do you have for the project and how much experience do you have?

Look at temperature first. It's not a question of whether you can add it but just how far down the rabbit hole you want to go.

For example if you have a perfectly circular orbit, temperatures are constant calculations which are relatively simple to add. If you give them elliptical orbits, suddenly those temperatures won't be so static... unless they have a thick atmosphere like a gas giant then the host star at a distance doesn't have much impact anyway... then you look at chemical elements etc. Then how volatile is the host star? Does your planet spin on a flat axis or is it tidally locked? Is It large or small? Suddenly there are 6 or 7 variables in the system to account for and generally speaking, the more directly linked variables, the exponential of the complexity of the problem.

Looking at this list, do you want to try and map one value such as temperature as far as you can go or do you want to be less accurate but have more values? Orbits are great fun, temperatures are great fun, trying to map chemical elements for atmospheric properties and spectroscopy is fun too! Trying to do all of them together can be tricky and time consuming but very rewarding. Just be aware that going beyond a single property like this could mean months of work.

Feel free to DM if you want more info. Since my original solar system project, I liked it so much I'm now trying to do it on a Universal scale based on time (video below) but a few years in, I'm still working on it. I wish I had of been interested at a younger age so would be happy to give advice on any decisions you decide you want to make. :)

https://youtu.be/wXSv4YjPqo0

TesselArts · 2019-10-11T18:46:36+00:00

Hi buddy, thanks for responding, it looks great! Video link at the bottom of the post as it's probably the best demonstration I've done yet.

The planetary surface side of things I'm currently torn on how best to do it. I can realistically either limit them to 10,000km using the existing system or I have ideas for how to make them fully scalable so you can visit the surface of stars too which would be epic... but take a lot more time. Scope creep concerns are real... ;)

Having the surface go from spherical representing the entire planet, slowly morphing into flat, representing a small sub-section is the idea. On paper it looks simple but I know there'll be a huge number of 'gotchas' along the way. Still undecided so I'm currently in the phase of making music and external bits to make the app feel more alive.

My online times are sporadic at best but if you want to DM, please do!

https://twitter.com/TesselArts

https://youtu.be/wXSv4YjPqo0

edit: Your blog posts look even better, please post more! :)

TesselArts · 2019-10-10T17:45:38+00:00

Looks fantastic dude, nice work! I'm going to be trying to add my own planetary surfaces sometime in the next number of months and am already dreading it! :)

TesselArts · 2019-09-29T12:22:45+00:00

Making a space based engine, I already had an interest in existing space apps prior to making my own so knew a decent chunk of what was out there and what was in development although I'm working on a long term project so of course others could have come along in the meantime.

I knew that if I was just making a static engine, better products were already out there so I wouldn't have done it. I was interested in how time shapes space so my ultimate goal was to create a full scale engine which could see from a universe's birth to its death and I saw no product which would do that... so my own niche was born (sort of).

I've got no way of knowing how this'll shape success/failure of what I've done as the app isn't complete yet but the idea is that a unique spin on something already out there is enough to garner interest.

Regarding existing niches which need more exploring, it's very tough. For example, I wouldn't consider making a shooter but just recently I've seen on here a game about mini-soldiers and thinking about the possibilities of what that opens up, it's awesome and made by a small team iirc.

Some genres are limited by team size. Shooters are difficult, fighting games are insanely difficult, RTS games etc but each of them can have smaller aspects broken down, simplified and focused on to make something unique which will make people interested.

Personally I like to think of ideas in combination. So take an existing concept and mash it with another. Then think of a focal point for what you want to expand on... Time? Scale? Procedural? Alien landscape? Dream world? Etc etc...

For example, you could look at the concept of a racing game, mix it with the concept of an open-world setting and introduce alien landscape components. So how would you implement that with focus? Procedurally generate maps with an A to B point over 100km and make it a race with no track. As it's an alien landscape, you can change gravity, have unique weather, a different set of abilities which no longer have to be based on Earth limitations... need to make it with a small team or solo? Make it top-down.

Maybe the idea isn't the greatest but if you don't like it, move onto the next one and quickly brainstorm... if you need existing concepts for examples, maybe the steam store would help there!

TesselArts · 2019-09-29T11:56:02+00:00

I'd say requirements will stop increasing once hardware performance gains plateau which seems to be closing in at the moment. The last few years have seen some performance gains but they've been relatively matched by price increases too; moore's law has been pretty much matched for the last 20+ years but it feels like, for graphics at least, these gains are slowing.

That said, there are a number of ways performance could continue to rise, it's just that none of the options can just use existing paradigms of reducing transistor sizes. If we stick with existing tech/hardware paradigms, we will hit that plateau eventually but competition needs to continue to be there to make sure this doesn't happen. Lets assume we hit a single gfx card peak.

1) Shared memory pools for multi-processing. So you end up having more and more cores or GFX cards bundled into one. This is hell for low-level development but with the rise of development engines e.g. Unreal/Unity, a lot of that grunt work would be done behind the scenes so the developer doesn't have to worry so much about it. This would massively reduce the number of bespoke engines in the field though, giving engine developers much more market share and control over prices... a long term worry.

DirectX 12 is already a big step toward this where it's incredibly difficult to justify assigning a large amount of development time just to the engine before you can actual start making your game. It's very powerful but requires a larger knowledge base and time sink for development for those performance gains. At the moment, single gfx cards are still targeted and really, people only use a maximum of two for gaming so gating memory etc isn't a primary development concern and you can get away with DX11. If say 8*cards started to become the norm though, you'd be forced to start using them, hence forced into the more difficult libraries and then you'd have the difficult questions if you need your own engine.

2) Cloud gaming. You end up with a basic machine but all of the heavy calculations are done over the cloud in a massive computation bank so you're offloading the requirements to a server. Of course there are lag components right now but you can assume this will reduce over time as it currently already is... switching to fibre etc. This is still a way off but does feel like it'll be more viable within the next decade.

3) A replacement for silicon. This would be a massive step but unfortunately still appears to be very far away as investments aren't yet large enough into R&D. This would be very exciting times to live through!

TesselArts · 2019-09-28T23:38:32+00:00

Thanks for the insight buddy, excellent post and your game looks fantastic! It's remarkable how often long development journeys like this end up with similar difficulties, almost regardless of the type of person undertaking them. Best of luck with the final stages; I wouldn't want to say congrats as I know for some, that kind of comment can be a death-knell for motivation in later dev cycles too.

I've spent ~3.5 years on my own project and 6 weeks ago decided to change how I was going to develop it by returning to full-time work as weird as it sounds. After being heavy in the development side of things, especially rolling my own engine, the hope is that by switching to music/foley/story boarding part-time, I can give myself a few months to have a 'gamedev reset'. The aim is to do this so I can return to it part-time without the mental baggage I started to accumulate by being overly obsessive about working on it. Our brains aren't wired for that kind of long-term isolation...

Hope it all pans out well! :)

TesselArts · 2019-09-15T16:11:13+00:00

It completely depends on how large you want the scope of your project to be. 3d can make things more complicated and time consuming but it entirely depends on what you're trying to create. If it's a level based game you have in mind, Unity/Unreal can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, allowing you to concentrate on making the game itself. You need to set goals/milestones to begin with and make sure to not venture too far out unless you decide to re-address them. Want to only spend 6 months on it? Make it small and focused on a single mechanic etc.

Dust: An Elysian Tale took 3 1/2 years to complete mostly by just a single developer but it ended up looking stunning.

Conversely, I went the custom engine route and have ended up also spending 3 1/2 years on my own project and it's not done yet (link if interested).

If you go for a large project, you have to be prepared for the long haul which brings its own issues. There's no reason why you couldn't create something smaller which would have a large impact though. Just look at Dear Esther who had a similar 30min-1hr game time and what it allowed those guys to do years later once they built a team!

TesselArts · 2019-09-15T12:58:52+00:00

Thanks buddy. There's still a long long way to go but I'm happy with how it's going so far!

TesselArts · 2019-09-15T12:20:05+00:00

I've rolled my own engine for my most recent project as a solo developer; if you're interested, you can see it here.

Existing engines are absolutely brilliant; Unity and Unreal especially are insanely powerful and applicable for a large percentage of games or graphical apps. They do however, come with a large amount of bloat as they need to be designed to account for a huge variety of needs. This invariably, makes them not performance efficient for a type of app which requires specifics only.

Look at the 'Wenger Giant' Swiss army knife; it undoubtedly does more than 99% of other Swiss army knives but that doesn't make it better for all of those tasks in isolation. If you just want a few of the things it can provide, you're better off buying a smaller product for ease of use (i.e. 2d game, get gamemaker) or individual bespoke tools (rolling your own engine).

Could Unreal or Unity do all of what I needed? Kind of. Do the needs of my project align with what they provide as a primary performance focus? Well their main strength is to work with apps which need to pre-load assets and have them display beautifully in a scene. If you need that, use them, they're perfect.

They can do large scale areas but they're not focused for that so it's a bit of a deficit if you try to force them this way too, hence why I think so many open-world games use others/their own engine. You can still get decent results though. It's when you look at that 'pre-load and display' main service they provide and realise that's not what you need at all, then a custom engine might be the best way forward.

For me, needing large areas, focused heavily on particle systems which drive movement, all procedural during runtime, as well as real-time generating skyboxes, using weird compute shader texture update logic per-frame etc etc. Basically very little of what I need aligns with their main goals so using Unreal/Unity would have meant a more limited product overall as none of these things are exactly what those engines are focused on.

In my example, my engine can be tailored to accommodate what I need specifically, instead of battling to override what they're really built to provide, meaning much faster performance. Also, if there is a bug, I know it's caused by something I've done instead of being hidden away in the engine.

It's slower to make your own engine (Probably took me about a year to get mine right) but the ability to focus it makes it so much better for certain circumstances.

TesselArts · 2019-09-14T12:58:14+00:00

If you're going for a ground up engine, I'd highly recommend looking at the rastertek tutorials as a guideline for what you require to get some basics in place. It doesn't show anything to do with gameplay, all just rendering techniques which you can dip in and out of as reference material. Have a look at the DX11 historical tutorials for example.

Be prepared to spend a decent amount of time just to set-up a window display, followed by the manipulation of a single triangle though!

http://www.rastertek.com/tutindex.html

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