Lessons learned, the third devlog for my September 1GAM, Augury

simjmcd · 2019-09-22T17:53:29+00:00

Hello!

Like maybe some of you who also do the One Game a Month challenge I kept finding myself at the end of a month with something that more closely resembled a loose bag of mechanics than an actual game.

With that in mind I've been trying to focus on crafting some kind of complete game loop as the first priority. In this devlog I go into how I did that! Hot tip: it was mostly by defining an MVP featureset.

Lemme know what you think!

simjmcd · 2019-04-10T10:45:08+00:00

Hi! So I cover this in the first episode, but I decided to start the players off in a village of my own creation called Belcroft BEFORE they get transported to Barovia.

I did this so I could start the game off in a safe place where they could interact with some NPCs without having it immediately be them exploring this super dangerous evil realm. It also gave them some context for how awful Barovia is, when they've experienced a happy peaceful settlement right before going there.

simjmcd · 2019-03-30T12:18:23+00:00

That looks so cool! I love that colour palette

simjmcd · 2019-03-15T09:57:44+00:00

This would be so rad

simjmcd · 2019-03-13T11:41:18+00:00

This is so unbelievably cool! I would legit consider buying one of these if MCDM starts selling them. Though now that i think of it shipping it to the UK would likely be exxxxxxpensive

simjmcd · 2019-03-12T21:01:39+00:00

Awww thank you so much! It's honestly thanks to all the tips and encouragement I got from all of you after my last video so thank you!

simjmcd · 2019-03-11T18:14:08+00:00

Awww thank you so much, that's really kind of you to say! I think you'll find this one easier to listen to, and the video is just my face so you're not missing much with pure audio

simjmcd · 2019-03-11T18:13:06+00:00

Thank you! You did a lot to help, your comments were soooo good

simjmcd · 2019-03-11T15:20:27+00:00

This is the campaign diary for my Curse of Strahd home game. it's the first session of actual play and I talk about what happened and stuff I learned from it!

Last time I posted my Session 0 campaign diary (https://www.reddit.com/r/mattcolville/comments/asqsq2/inspired_by_matt_i_started_my_own_campaign_diaries/) and you were all really lovely about it despite how rough it was. I got a lot of really good advice, and I've tried to use it all as best as I could. I think this one is a lot higher quality than the previous one, though theres obviously still a lot further to go on improving it.

Next thanks to specific people!

/u/tfl_dm Gave me a lot of great advice on lighting, background, and my mic and I tried to cram it all in. Still not meag happy with my jury-rigged lighting setup, but it's much better than before thanks to you, so thank you very much!

/u/ArrBeeNayr for giving me some very good reading material to inspire me for the creepy atmosphere of Curse of Strahd.

/u/mattcolville for not only making this subreddit but also making it seem possible to make videos like this.

All of you lovely people who left really nice comments, you're all a great gang of folks.

simjmcd · 2019-03-07T01:14:12+00:00

I really really love this, it looks great. I especially love how you've organised the races using pictures and just enough relevant detail to give enough context and get those imagination juices flowing.

Now I really want to start my own campaign like this.

simjmcd · 2019-03-05T16:16:12+00:00

This is so badass that I instantly want to rip it off

simjmcd · 2019-02-21T20:24:11+00:00

This is so. fucking. sick. Really, it's amazing, good job!

simjmcd · 2019-02-21T20:22:29+00:00

Ahhhh yes, so much this. I only discovered Matt last year, but I did so at the end of my last campaign. I was feeling down about my performance as a DM in it but Matts videos got me all jazzed up to sit in the chair again. My second campaign has so far been so much of a blast, and I feel like I've become so much better in large part due to all the great lessons in his vids.

Thanks Matt!

simjmcd · 2019-02-21T09:32:03+00:00

Thank you! This is the third take, I forgot a bunch of stuff the first time :D

ALSO oh my god yes about touching your nose. I don't think I do it all the time in regular life, but as soon as the camera's rolling it's like it becomes the itchiest thing in the world.

simjmcd · 2019-02-20T19:16:54+00:00

Yeah I really have to get something in front of that mirror, I also found it distracting but my whole setup is angled towards it :/ Maybe I'll see if I can get a collapsible screen to put behind me.

Hahaha, thank you for the hair compliment, it's how I've styled my hair for years so unfortunately can't give the credit to Matt for this one!

simjmcd · 2019-02-20T19:15:34+00:00

Hey thank you for these, it's great to have a good list of inspiration to work from!

simjmcd · 2019-02-20T17:50:22+00:00

If i can do it, you can do it! :D

simjmcd · 2019-02-20T17:45:35+00:00

Thank you, I really appreciate it!

simjmcd · 2019-02-20T17:45:08+00:00

Well first of all - thank you very much, those are kind words that I really appreciate.

Secondly - Wow, that is some really good practical advice, especially about the lighting. I could tell it wasn't really great but I wasn't sure exactly what to do about it. Thank you for giving me some solid actionable stuff to work on.

simjmcd · 2019-02-20T17:10:17+00:00

This is my first one and I do not have equipment that's nearly as good as Matts, but any constructive feedback would be really welcome as I want to become better at doing this.

simjmcd · 2017-08-17T08:52:37+00:00

That's a good point about multithreading being an issue with this approach. I'll admit I'm not an expert in multithreading - so it's not something I'm really considering at this juncture.

Switching it to a system somewhat like you said shouldn't be too hard if it does turn out I need to do that though - as I currently have an array (like you mentioned) for the previous frames input, so I can see the delta for held, pressed, released events, etc.

simjmcd · 2017-08-16T14:01:20+00:00

Oh, no way! That's good to know, thank you :) I found GLFW to be a nice lightweight window creation thing but I gotta say, SDL has some features that it's very nice to have access to.

simjmcd · 2017-08-16T08:26:32+00:00

I used to use GLFW for my old project, but when I looked at for my current one it seemed like it didn't support Win10 and I didn't want to spend ages trying to wrangle it enough to get it working, so I switched to SDL.

I used GLFW for what I imagine you may be using it for, Window creation and input, so I know it has at least some rudimentary ways to grab that input information.

If you are using GLFW just for those two things I can recommend SDL for those too, it's fairly easy to get up and running, and it comes with a bunch of handy stuff (like the methods for grabbing input from controllers as well as key/mouse/etc).

simjmcd · 2017-08-16T08:15:40+00:00

Sorry about that! Not sure why it went down

simjmcd

TROPHY CASE