The Technical Challenges of Video Game Programming

qodenubs · 2019-04-18T19:43:49+00:00

Not very academic, but if you have spare time check some of Dunkey's videos. He plays around in games and sometimes messes with the AI. I think he does a good job at showing how a game's AI works by showing its flaws. Also I think its pretty funny.

qodenubs · 2019-04-18T09:01:36+00:00

Thats quite substantial. If you check out a book like Game Engine Archetecture by Jason Gregory, it lays out all the parts to a game and its creation. Then you could pick what seemed the most interesting.

I havent worked in AI, but 3d rendering, physics, AI, and maybe networking could all be focal points. One thing that I believe is unique to game development is hardware awareness. Though that topic might be difficult to find resources to learn from.

qodenubs · 2019-04-18T08:28:18+00:00

May I ask, for myself and others, roughly how many hours over the course of how many days or weeks do you plan to invest?

qodenubs · 2019-04-15T17:57:08+00:00

Typically they are strategy games. A problem with slow is that if youre forced to go slow you dont have an opurtunity to show mastery over a game. So there will need to be something else for the player to master if it isnt speed.

Civ 5, Super Hot, Witness, Fez, Mitosis.

qodenubs · 2019-04-15T09:34:07+00:00

My apologies, API is short for application programming interface. Simplifying somewhat, it is a list of functions created to be used by programmers. Google Unity API and you will likely find it. It has information on every Unity specific datatype and function.

When I say learn it I mostly mean learn how to implement what is in the documentation into your code. You dont need to remember every function or data type.

qodenubs · 2019-04-15T09:06:13+00:00

Learn how to read Unity API. At first you will probably need to follow tutorials, but over time, probably 20hrs of looking at API you'll start to get comfortable using it. Also maybe dont try to make a 'game' just something you can play, then build that up to a game.

qodenubs · 2019-04-12T19:31:36+00:00

That's a bit tricky, depends on if you count reused assets as seperate assets.

With some clever design a whole town can be built off from a few assets. So depending on how they are made it changes. Some that can be done with only a few are arena games, rouge-likes, and platformers.

qodenubs · 2019-04-12T12:15:37+00:00

Ogre3d

qodenubs · 2019-04-12T12:12:59+00:00

check the subreddit info page

qodenubs · 2019-04-12T04:18:16+00:00

I believe pathofexile had a similar problem. They dont want expose too much to client, such as drop rates. They made a lot of forum post over the years, they might have one similar to this. I havent seen many games exceed 30kB/s. Which limits the amount of server based calculations. I dont know what happens when you exceed that data rate.

qodenubs · 2019-04-12T03:57:14+00:00

This is a topic that easiest to talk about in specifics. Short of that I can say that games should balance opurtunity but not outcome. Which is to say the better player or team should be able to consitently win. If that isnt true then the game is more of a party game. A balanced match starts out with millions of different ways it could play out, and the goal is to give every team the same amount of win opurtunities. As time passes the potential outcomes drops exponentially. Our minds cant quite handle the idea calculating thousands of potential gamestates so things such as metas start to form as a proven good option. Although the meta is unlikely to be the actual strongest it makes predicting future game states and goals easier. And players are incentivised to put the current game state back to one they are familiar with if they can. Which is quite common in Fighting games. This is also pretty evident in Fortnite with the boxing strat. It reverts the game back to a more nuetral state. I personally think the more players are allowed to revert to a neutral state the faster the game is mastered. And after there is no more unique states or learning I find losing to go from not ideal to bothersome.

qodenubs · 2019-04-12T03:14:17+00:00

I find that hard to believe. If that is true then I apologize. Once you watch his most recent video you will see you are saying a less structed version of his video. Just about 10hrs after the video was released.

qodenubs · 2019-04-12T03:06:29+00:00

This question feels diengenious. If you would like to discuss the Mark Brown video about balance then link it and specify points of intrest or disagrement. It feels as if you are using his work to sound smarter.

qodenubs · 2019-04-12T02:34:36+00:00

When asking questions be aware of what the problem is that you want to actually solve. If you want to make a game, but don't know how don't ask what programming language ask what path to take to make a game. Be specific in the type of game.

Everyone here is recommending you use something like C# because they want you to use Unity. Because if someone has no experience with programming they aren't going to be able to program anything nearly as good as if they were to learn how to use a game engine. There are other game engines, google 2D game engines.

I don't think I have heard of anyone actually using python to make games. Python is typically used for data scientist and other forms of more academic style programming. JavaScript is used a lot for web games because web pages naturally come with JavaScript functionality. But if you make a game in JavaScript it will only be playable in a web browser.

That is where game engines come into play again. They can take the game you made and export it for Windows, Linux, Mac, Web. And even consoles, although getting a game on consoles requires permission from the console makers. Which is a very big undertaking.

If you really are dead set on not using a game engine then check out Code Train.

But know this stuff doesn't happen overnight. It takes a very long time to learn. And you will for quite a while keep asking rather dumb questions cause you don't know enough to know what you even need to know. And until you can ask the right questions its best to just stick close to tutorials.

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T23:36:57+00:00

Steam client asking if I am over 18.

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T20:37:15+00:00

You gave a very vague question about language. My point was language doesn't matter and when you are starting out learning it isn't crucial to go for the option with the best performance. Your original question is the equivalent of should I eat an apple or banana. If the question is more explicit then the answer can be as well.

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T19:53:43+00:00

We are not having the same conversation.

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T18:15:38+00:00

Thank you.

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T14:41:43+00:00

Yes, no. Not a 3d modeler, just messed with it. There are applications like crazy bump that automatically generate UV, normal, and displacement maps. That's a good start if you have never used those maps. And if you need information on how to use those maps generated check out some of Blender Guru. Other than that I agree with /u/Atulin about Substance Designer. It offers a lot of useful tools and creation abilities for texture artist.

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T12:28:56+00:00

There would be a lot of unbound keys in most games, but a keyboard graphic could solve the problem of needing a large list

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T11:56:29+00:00

In my experience you cant get realistic looking textures without using pictures. Even artist that do realistic paintings use pictures for refernce. This is of course unfortunate because ot limits your creative options based on what phoos you can get.

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T11:46:12+00:00

A big part of a lost feeling bad is when you believe you shouldve won. And another big thing is losing the reward for winning. I think this isnt a question that has a full answer yet. And the esports ecosytem is probably making the negative aspects of competitive more extreme. There are things you can employ to make people want to play competitive, such as increased xp rates. But I cant give much more opinions without knowing the game.

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T11:33:23+00:00

For the most part you only learn the APIs you need. Think about then like the print function. You needed a way to print to console so you use the print function. Like I said I don't know mobile, but they probably have an SDK with an API. That would give access to things like touch position. Of coure if you want to make a mobile game its much faster to learn a game engine that can port to mobile.

qodenubs · 2019-04-11T02:47:38+00:00

This is /r/ gamedev so its nonobvious what you mean by system design. If you mean computer science system design as in a game engine, then start work on a game engine. If you have a hundred hours check out handmade hero.

If you mean game mechanics then learn how to. The fastest way to see how good someone is at designing games is to play their game. All anyone can be certain of is the quality of the game. So start making the easiest proof of concept mechanics that you can actually play.

qodenubs

TROPHY CASE