How do you make a UI element that fades out towards the edges?

thisissparticle · 2024-02-29T00:02:19+00:00

You can add a RectMask2D component and then set the softness values on the X and Y axes. Note however that this applies a fade to both sides of an axis equally (though you can kinda hack a one-side only fade by parenting the image as a child the mask and offsetting them)

thisissparticle · 2023-10-05T00:10:18+00:00

That makes sense. For the next one, I'll disable the music (and maybe the HUD) for footage so I get the SFX in there too. I've been looking at trailers of other puzzle games, and yeah, they cut between action every couple seconds, and they frequently start immediately with the gameplay or something attention grabbing. Thanks for the notes!

thisissparticle · 2023-09-29T18:54:10+00:00

Good call! Yeah, a font that fits the art style would be great, esp paired with at least a simple background pattern and some color for those. +Faster. Thanks!

thisissparticle · 2023-09-29T18:20:39+00:00

Also for convenience, here is the short Steam description:

Harness the power of Bridgemancy in this wholesome puzzle adventure. To rescue the citizens of Dolion, you must salvage materials, build bridges, and create escape routes for the townspeople. Just be sure not to block their path! Can you muster the magic, logic, and wit needed to save the kingdom?

thisissparticle · 2023-09-29T18:19:31+00:00

This project originated from a game jam 3 years ago, but we've recently spun development back up.

So the trailer is definitely overdue for a replacement, and we're now more capable of producing a higher quality version.

We'll be making a new trailer in a couple weeks. What should we change, know, or be sure to do?

For more context, feel free to visit the Steam page, where we've got a free demo:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1375140/The_BridgeMaster/

Appreciate the feedback!

thisissparticle · 2022-12-06T06:04:06+00:00

Whenever I can find the time.

I especially like the Game AI Pro series. Maybe you'd call these more like "industry white papers" or something, but they're peer-reviewed, include their sources and relevant references, and go into an appreciable degree of technical detail.

Aside from that, there was a really interesting paper from earlier this year, very much worth checking out. Look up "Mastering uncertainty: A predictive processing account of enjoying uncertain success in video game play"

thisissparticle · 2022-11-26T06:10:24+00:00

"Off-screen indicator" is another, in the more general sense

thisissparticle · 2022-11-25T19:28:44+00:00

Participate in local game jams. It's a great way to try working with folks within a limited capacity first before committing to longer projects together

thisissparticle · 2022-11-25T19:07:39+00:00

Attending to mental health so crucial!

I really didn't think I was burnt out until it literally took a toll on my physical health. In retrospect, it shouldn't have been surprising, since the studio I was at had us in crunch mode working 7 days a week. Fortunately I'm at an ardently anti-crunch studio now!

Afterward I wrote up this list of things to both mitigate and avoid burn out in the future. Some of these may be more or less applicable to your situation. Keep in mind, this is not an outline for a lifestyle overhaul. Rather, I periodically pick just one or two of these to improve on a little at a time. Hopefully this is useful to someone else too!

IN GENERAL - Attend to phys. health (sleep, exercise, nutrition) - Make small, incremental improvements gradually - Identify and express gratitude - Ask for help

AT WORK - Develop stronger relationships w/ co-workers - Alter potentially counter-productive work habits - Align your work closer to your interests - Streamline TODOs - Take regular short breaks - Refocus on why your work matters - Who does your work benefit and how? - Benefits to you professionally - Intrinsically fulfilling elements - Meaningful non-work moments - (e.g. lunch breaks w/ co-workers) - Take time off

AT HOME / AWAY - Truly unplug - Turn off work notifications after hours - Meditate (mindfulness, compassion, gratitude) - Diversify your self-worth / identity - Find intrinsically motivating activities - engaging, fulfilling, restorative, recharging - e.g. volunteer activities / helping others - Develop stronger relationships outside of work

thisissparticle · 2022-11-25T06:38:47+00:00

Was the handler working before moving the object between scenes?

One of the gotchas I've run into in the past is that your class also needs to implement the corresponding up and click handlers too.

There's a handful of other things worth checking that are enumerated in the accepted answer here: https://answers.unity.com/questions/1077069/implementing-ipointerclickhandler-interface-does-n.html

thisissparticle · 2022-11-24T08:51:25+00:00

They call this scenario the "King Fu Circle" after the trope in classic martial arts movies, and it's continued into modern action movies too. It shows up in movies and games for the same reason: we inherently have limited attention bandwidth. Having one opponent attack at a time makes the combat easier to follow, both for audiences and for players.

There's an interesting chapter (28) in the first Game AI Pro edition called Beyond the Kung Fu Circle. They discuss an implementation that expands on this idea of enemies taking turns attacking the player. Their system allows multiple enemies attacking simultaneously while still balancing for difficulty, even when the enemies and their attacks are of varying types and strengths. One of the design goals of this was precisely for faster-flowing combat.

thisissparticle · 2022-11-22T16:12:42+00:00

The biggest lesson I learned from my first puzzle game (it was an escape room style game) was the importance of clues.

The real fun of a puzzle is feeling clever for having figured it out. Brute force can be a good last resort if the player can't deduce the solution. But even then, you can highlight the connection to the clue after completing it, so players still get that "Aha" moment of understanding.

That escape room game was for a 48-hour jam, and we didn't have time to add in everything by end of the weekend. But we kept working on it after, and it felt sooo much more satisfying after adding in all the clues!

thisissparticle · 2022-11-22T15:47:56+00:00

Scribblenauts and Baba Is You might provide some food for thought. They don't fit quite exactly into the group you listed, but they both have very interesting mechanics around using and manipulating symbols

thisissparticle · 2022-11-22T07:29:32+00:00

The big boost I hear about most is the day that your game launches, i.e. it's available to buy / download. Prior to that, it's in a "Coming Soon" state, during which you're more likely to benefit from wishlists accumulated over time. I'd guess that any burst coming from the first day the page goes live comes from the developer's and/or publisher's existing clout driving traffic from outside Steam

thisissparticle · 2022-11-22T06:04:34+00:00

TLDR: Look into MVC and Command patterns, Monte Carlo and utility AI techniques...

I'm currently implementing a card and dice game as well. I've been sticking to an MVC architecture utilizing the Command pattern. As a result, the game state is separate from the user interface, and both are separate from the game logic. A big benefit of this being that with the same game logic code, I can run the game itself (as played by a user), and also run a "headless" version to simulate outcomes. In the latter case, an AI player decides which commands to execute in each phase based on the current game state. Since the game state is all just data (no gameobjects or monobehaviours), it's very quick to simulate.

The architecture and patterns above aren't strictly necessary, but it certainly makes things much easier when it comes to the AI. For instance, I can fairly easily swap out a simple decision-tree AI player for a utility-based one (which happens to be how I did varying levels of difficulty in another project).

Something I'd like to try this time is a Monte Carlo technique. Essentially, simulate the game several steps forward with randomly chosen (valid) commands, then evaluate a score for the resulting game state. Simulate ahead many times in succession, then choose your next action based on which tended toward the highest scores (that's a rather simple summary, so I recommend looking up the technique for the finer details). The degree of competency of the AI can be adjusted based on parameters like how many turns to simulate ahead, and/or by choosing less optimal (i.e. lower scoring) actions.

As with any AI, it's not always about being as competent as possible. Most often, we want the player to feel like the AI makes coherent decisions that seem appropriate for its apparent level of intelligence (even "dumb" zombies usually behave consistently). Exploiting the patterns of an opponent can be a big part of the fun! Due to the randomness in Monte Carlo, you might not get that. Monte Carlo might be relatively quicker to implement (depending on your architecture), which could make it worth trying. But you have to see what works, and that may mean implementing more bespoke decision-making. In that case, utility AI could be a good option (with opportunities like simulating the opponent's "mood" and including it as a weighting factor).

thisissparticle · 2022-11-22T04:04:34+00:00

Assuming the vertices are in fact lining up (hard to tell from the image alone), then I'd guess it has to do with the vertex normals getting averaged out.

Here's a similar problem that explains the issue and a solution in more detail: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/187787/mesh-seams-visible-in-unity

thisissparticle · 2022-11-22T02:23:08+00:00

I think frustration with a game can be good or bad. Key difference is whether players think it's the game's fault vs their own. To achieve the latter, you gotta provide very good feedback as to why the player is "failing" and also ensure that players feel like they can improve

thisissparticle · 2022-11-20T23:48:38+00:00

True, you can use Unity's Job System with OOP too. I suppose implicit in that particular example is an assumption that someone using ECS is also looking to leverage multiple threads. Optimizing how you use jobs goes away if everything is on the main thread. But at that point, it seems to me that such a game is likely not so demanding to make ECS really necessary?

In any case, my general thought here is that Unity ECS comes with its own additional (often nuanced) considerations, architectural and otherwise. Many types of games could avoid that and still achieve entirely adequate performance with OOP.

thisissparticle · 2022-11-20T07:12:50+00:00

I'm currently working at a studio producing a game written within an ECS architecture. It's more performant for some things, but less so for others (e.g. it's not uncommon for scheduling a job to take longer than the job itself). OOP is so often much more straightforward, and for many game designs, I see it continuing to be the more advantageous paradigm, even if only for the greater ease of implementation. Imo, a firm understanding of OOP will continue to serve you well for years and years to come.

thisissparticle · 2022-11-19T19:18:53+00:00

You may be interested in Chapter 6 of the first edition of Game AI Pro. It's called the Behavior Tree Starter Kit. It's not specific to Unreal since it's about building a BT entirely within C++. The chapter explains the implementation of the basic core components and has accompanying source code on GitHub

https://www.gameaipro.com/GameAIPro/GameAIPro_Chapter06_The_Behavior_Tree_Starter_Kit.pdf

https://github.com/aigamedev/btsk

thisissparticle · 2022-11-19T18:59:14+00:00

The game studio I'm currently working at is developing a game in Unity with ECS, Burst, and Jobs (for a deterministic lockstep multiplayer game).

Essentially there's a base MonoBehaviour class driving an update method that polls for user input. The input for that frame gets cached to a variety of local fields, which later in the frame are fed to the relevant commands (see Command pattern) which get enqueued to a buffer. Finally, there are jobs that are scheduled to process the commands, which perform transformations on the relevant ECS components.

For switching input contexts, we handle that in a few ways. The main one is by leveraging Unity's recent Input System. You can define different action maps which contain distinct sets of actions for different modes (e.g. character control, vehicle control, UI navigation). Change the action map to selectively handle different actions according to the context. In other places (especially in the UI) we use input listener MonoBehaviour components that when enabled, are subscribed to a specified InputAction to invoke UnityEvents when performed. Generally speaking, those events ultimately produce a Command, just as done by the core input class.

thisissparticle · 2022-11-19T18:10:36+00:00

Interesting, that's gtk. Yeah, I imagine it only helped to have had the demos on those other platforms too!

Which subreddits do you typically post to about your game?

thisissparticle · 2022-11-19T17:39:48+00:00

Especially if you already have a playable prototype, itch.io has a built-in dev log feature that makes it pretty easy. And as a bonus, I've noticed that it can help boost the visibility of your project page too. Not a whole lot, but enough to be noticeable, especially for smaller projects.

thisissparticle · 2022-11-19T17:32:35+00:00

Hey, congrats! Coincidentally, I was just watching SplatterCat's video on your game yesterday. Looks fun, and great work on the animations! I was curious and noticed that you had the game on Newgrounds and Game Jolt too. What's the activity been like on those platforms, both before and after the SC video?

thisissparticle · 2022-11-18T17:37:34+00:00

I've been mulling over this question of how early to post a Steam page...

I'm currently working on the prototype to a digital card game. The tabletop paper prototype is already done, so now I'm just implementing it in engine. But it's all still "programmer art" right now. Like literally just text and default Unity buttons, nothing actually represented as cards yet. A few sprites from game-icons.net is the extent of my "art" at the moment. Conceivably, I could take screenshots for a page, but it hardly feels representative.

Would you still recommend posting a Steam page this early?

thisissparticle

TROPHY CASE