Game Development

Well, I finished high school, and at the time I had an interest in making websites, so I pursued a 3-year IT degree, towards the end of it did an internship with a web development firm in conjunction with my paper, they offered me a job after I graduated. I got a different job offer from an online auction company though in a different city, decided to take the latter. Partner and I moved city and she found a job

I ended up quitting my web job after a year cuz I decided that doing web work for money was super annoying and not worth it lol

fluffed around a few years without doing much of note, and then found Unity and it's at least captured my attention for this long

TheMuffinCoder

Sounds great! :D

Everything was related to programming/IT in some way or another

Chris McFarland

yeah, programming knowledge is versatile

TheMuffinCoder

I have to go to a internship next year for stuff related to biomedical stuff when I just wanna be a CS major :(

Chris McFarland

but yeah, if you have an ambition, follow it. maybe you'll stick with it, maybe not

:(

Doing things you don't want to do is a waste of time imo

Do something that makes you smile

TheMuffinCoder

12:43 AM

yea but atleast I'll get job experience and get to miss out a day a week next school year (senior year whoo!)

Chris McFarland

haha :)

Jon

I wanted to be a professional chicken herder

Turns out the job doesn't exist

So I turned to programming

TheMuffinCoder

new on the app store, chicken herder

Push chicken into their pens, generate buckets of chicken

Jon

Kfc Sim

TheMuffinCoder

reminds me of tf2, I wonder how popular the game still is

Jon

12:51 AM

Ah yes tutti fruiti 2

TheMuffinCoder

Mannrobics

►

ooo so thats what happened to it...

Chris McFarland

these days when I start it up, there's a lot of custom maps that are popular

NaCl

@MickLH No, that's a bit too early

But possibly some gifs

Jon

1:11 AM

gfycat.com/CheapMessyBullmastiff

Chris McFarland

haha

DH.

@ChrisMcFarland Just got myself thinking, and I know you probably answered that a dozen times but I can't remember seeing it: How much time did take to make Tallowmere?

Jon

5 days

the guy is still working on it :)

@ChrisMcFarland I couldn't get too much into your game personally, mainly because I suck really bad at it

Chris McFarland

I spent the first 6 months doing like 8 hour days more or less, and that was the bulk of it

Jon

It is really awesome though

Chris McFarland

1:18 AM

@Jon yeah fair enough, it's not for everyone, for some it's easy, others it's hard hah

Jon

I'm waiting for my son to play it some day

DH.

Oh wow, that's a lot of commitment

Jon

I just got him to beat broforce

so i am gonna see if he likes tallowmere

Chris McFarland

but like, 6 months hard out, then 6 months not doing much, then 3 months once I got greenlit, then a couple months for mobile, and so far I've spent maybe 2 or 3 months doing Wii U on and off

@Jon Cool. I liked Broforce's aesthetic, but the instant-kill gameplay was just too frustrating for me

Jon

I want to put gorb on the wii u

Chris McFarland

1:19 AM

wait for the next console maybe, I dunno

DH.

Are you sure it would fit?

Jon

the instant kill is what I liked

because I played with him

I die, he keeps playing, lol

MickLH

@TheMuffinCoder omg yesss if anyone says anything good about TF2 I can counter it with this video

DH.

I mean, Gorb sometimes need precision, with Wii U would be a mess lol

Jon

Fit? it would if you only play on the controller.

it is precise on the controller

DH.

1:20 AM

Fair enough

Chris McFarland

@DH. yeah like, so launched March 2015, and a year on I'm still doing little updates. For my next title, I really feel like not calling the game done until it's out and ready for mass deployment on every platform would be a better strat

But I had no idea what I was doing haha

Seeding out updates and little things that are in development can end up being newsworthy. Get to milk the marketing for every little thing you add or change, as it's a mini celebration as you work towards the end goal of going gold and calling it done

once you're done, unless you release a big update or expansion, the excitement is gone

DH.

Hum... I see

Chris McFarland

hard to build hype for something that's already out :p

I mean, a game you've never heard of before, see it for the first time and you can get excited

but... building hype is a good strat for attracting potential customers imo

DH.

Certainly

I would probably be lazy or suck for promoting myself :P

Chris McFarland

yeah it's hard

DH.

1:32 AM

But well, I was thinking about it because I plan to work on a project I have for a year, but I will only have time for it next half year

For now all I'm doing is training with Unity and doing programmer art :P

Chris McFarland

that's what I did

sold like 14k copies so far

/shrug

DH.

TBH, if I end up with 1k copies solds I would be more than happy

Chris McFarland

:D

Jon

10 thousand people out there have played your game

you should be proud of yourself

Chris McFarland

I am, though I don't think about it much heh

At first it was exciting

DH.

1:47 AM

Hope it will be even better with Tallowmere 2!

Chris McFarland

now I just want to make a better game and hopefully get it in the hands of more people :)
Yeah

it's all good

TheMuffinCoder

js13kgames.com

I'm hyped already

I could had won last year if school hadn't given my all that summer homework

Chris McFarland

>.<

ask them to pay you next time

send them an invoice

TheMuffinCoder

lol this year I'm just taking 1 less AP class

Sie

Just rescued a little baby kitten. Around 4 weeks old.

vid.me/5EFY

Chris McFarland

1:52 AM

nice

TheMuffinCoder

@Sie It's so adorable >w<

are you going to keep it?

Sie

Of course. She is so cute. Currently she is exploring my entire room and looking around.

DH.

Everything's new, understandable

Sie

Of course.

TheMuffinCoder

what how did this win 3rd place!?!? js13kgames.com/games/chesspursuit/index.html

Sie

1:56 AM

She's adorable. She'll get scared of something but after she see it is a threat she'll puff up and act all brave as she goes up to it lol.

Chris McFarland

Make sure she gets spayed unless you plan on starting a tribe

TheMuffinCoder

@Sie Sie it's your destiny to make cat memes now

Oh snap its late gn everyone

Sie

@ChrisMcFarland Oh yell ya. The neighborhood is part of the problem she came out of. Lots of cats and not enough homes. We always fix our animals and if we can strays too.

Chris McFarland

byee

Sie

@TheMuffinCoder ya lol gn

Chris McFarland

1:57 AM

@Sie That's good

Almo

2:20 AM

@Sie :)

Kromster

4:53 AM

@MickLH No it does not (same as mine, but blue: a-a.d-cd.net/b64a88u/960.jpg)

Chris McFarland

6:32 AM

The animation in this Wonder Boy game looks slick:

Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap - Reveal Trailer

►

user92578

7:17 AM

That looks great

cheersphilip

7:45 AM

very slick :)

Shaun Wild

Good morning everyone

I want to make a website documenting everything I've learnt about 2D game development in Java. Reckon it's worth doing?

cheersphilip

yes

Shaun Wild

Okay, I'll look into it.

Uri Popov

I suppose you will get a bunch of visitors.

cheersphilip

I am Mr. Motivator today!

Uri Popov

7:57 AM

I too would like someday to make a blog, but I've neither the time or passion right now.

Shaun Wild

I want to make a blog I just can't be fussed with making a website for it haha

p = y * w + x, Does anyone recognise this equation?

Bit of fun :^)

Kevin van der Velden

2d array indexing?

Shaun Wild

yes, well done :)

user92578

8:13 AM

@ShaunWild I recently set up a website with static HTML and CSS, and even that wasn't a too big of a hazzle.

Shaun Wild

I was planning on making it a Glassfish web app with a PostgreSQL persistence

I wouldn't need to worry too much about Security as I'd be the only one able to actually submit blog posts, I wanted to make my own markup language similar to StackExchange's or BB code..

Kevin van der Velden

I use pelican blog.getpelican.com

user92578

Yeah I have no idea what those are, my site only uses a single jquery extension

Kevin van der Velden

So I don't really need to worry about security ^^

user92578

Me neither :D

Shaun Wild

8:17 AM

Part of the fun is writing it from Scratch though

user92578

Exactly

Uri Popov

guys I need some advice. Is there a way to create a animation in unity that will shake a game object and can be applied to multiple different game objcet.

Shaun Wild

Attach a script that changes the objects position in the Update() method I guess?

user92578

No idea, wouldn't a script do?

Shaun Wild

God I have soo much knowledge about Game Development theory I just want to answer everyones questions but no one asks Java questions on here :(

I've read like 3 books on it and have been doing it for like 6 years

And no one wants to laern from mee :(

Uri Popov

8:19 AM

A script would do. I just wanted to avoid moving them in code and wanted to use a single animation.So no way to make the animation use like delta isntead of specific coordinates huh ?

Shaun Wild

I'm not too clued up on Unity unfortunatley.

What is your problem with a script?

user92578

I'm glad no one asks Java questions, that means that less people are using it

Uri Popov

nah I can write a script that shakes them EZ PZ I just wanted to use the build in animation tools in unity so that maybe the artists can chage it if they want to

Shaun Wild

Hahaha don't trigger me :P

Java is a great language.

Uri Popov

not for game dev imo.

Kevin van der Velden

8:20 AM

It's just that the libraries are all terrible

user92578

laughs manically

Uri Popov

neither is c# tbh

Shaun Wild

For 2D game development, wht's the problem?

You can't say performance because that's just not an issue nowadays.

user92578

Operator overloading

Kevin van der Velden

@ShaunWild memory management =p

Shaun Wild

8:21 AM

3D game development is not Java's forte but 2D is easy

Uri Popov

I just think that auto GC is not good for game dev in general.

user92578

^

Shaun Wild

GC isn't really a concern

At least from my experience

Maybe in 3D development it is.

user92578

Well not more than in 2d

Uri Popov

and yet I've build my career on Unity and c#. Call me two faced :D

Shaun Wild

8:23 AM

I wish I had a career in game development.

I'm a back end web developer at the momen t.

user92578

I just dev after school

Shaun Wild

how old are you?

user92578

17, turning 18 in July

Shaun Wild

Ahh the youth of today

I'm 19 today, I don't know what I'm talking about hahaha

user92578

lol

user92578

8:25 AM

Your bday today?

Shaun Wild

Yes

user92578

grats!

Shaun Wild

Great birthday spent in work :P

Kevin van der Velden

@UriPopov unity has a lot of tweaks to the garbage collector to make it work better though

user92578

So what kind of game projects have you worked on? Got anything cool to show?

Kevin van der Velden

8:26 AM

Auto garbage collection can work but it requires a lot of care that quite often isn't possible in languages not designed for it

Shaun Wild

I literally never finish projects

I write an engine

Make some core gameplay

Then just quit because I can't find an artist

Kevin van der Velden

I have never ever ever done that, nope not at all

user92578

yup

Shaun Wild

I want to make a multiplayer game

That's set in the AVP universe

And it's like a 2d platform arena game

But I just can't get enough art to make it worthwhile as it will be very art intensive

Kevin van der Velden

Also setting it actually in an existing universe has all sorts of problems with copyright and such

Generally better to just make a game with the theme but not the setting =p

Shaun Wild

8:30 AM

I never planned on releasing it

user92578

Sounds cool! You can learn art though, I sucked when I started

Shaun Wild

I've always wanted to make a game for just me and my friends to play

Chris McFarland

8:57 AM

yeah, asset/content creation is work, big games need a lot of it, but put the effort in, get it done, you'll be happy if you do it :)

Uri Popov

or you can make a 100% percent procedural game with just math and dont bother with content creation.

Chris McFarland

make everything a dot with a text label lol

Uri Popov

After all every object boils down to math : the shape, the color , the texture, the physics.

A think a modern day text based adventure could be very fun @ChrisMcFarland

Blue Bug

I am level 60 something in Overwatch, now I think i can stop playing it and do something productive.

Chris McFarland

honestly, the act of putting a whole bunch of stuff together, as long as it has the same style, it's like painting a nice picture on the screen

Greg

9:01 AM

Hello people

Uri Popov

@BlueBug I love my job but currently I hate it because It's keeping me away from Blood&Wine

Chris McFarland

Ahoy

Uri Popov

Hey

Kevin van der Velden

@BlueBug NEVER

Play more overwatch!

Greg

I was thinking of ideas for GPS based games and wondering if you guys wanted to contribute. The gps games i've seen so far (ingress, pokemon go, etc) i think have pretty basic and some terrible mechanics. What would you guys want to see?

Chris McFarland

9:03 AM

losing 4 matches in a row is a good sign that I should do something productive lol

Kevin van der Velden

@UriPopov generating algorithms for procedural content generation is also content generation. It's just a descriptive style of content generation

Chris McFarland

GPS, I dunno, I prefer to sit inside as much as possible lol

Kevin van der Velden

I.e. you describe what you want the system to make rather then making it yourself

Greg

lol, well some of us need to go out and excersize or we'll get fat :P

but don't want to give up video game addiction either

Chris McFarland

Very true
I'd be too busy just walking around to look at my phone though

Kevin van der Velden

9:06 AM

Current evidence seems to point to me being physically incapable of getting fat.

Chris McFarland

Lucky!

Kevin van der Velden

Well it also means I'm underweight so meh

Greg

Just wait till you get older, i've seen men with twigs for arms and a skeleton rib cage have a pot belly :P

Kevin van der Velden

I am 27 =p

Greg

ah yea, i didn't have to wrry about stomach fat till i hit a little over 30

Chris McFarland

9:08 AM

heh

Greg

now i am running several miles a day to try to stave it off, i hope im not to late

Chris McFarland

three years ago I gained 20kg, was depressed and on meds that made me hungry 24/7
then I got sick of the weight and decided to do something about it
exercised daily and ate better for a few months, lost 15kg

Greg

but catching pokemon as i run has gotten tedious and isn't really fun.

Chris McFarland

but now I'm just lazy so went back up 10kg lol

Greg

haha

a good trick is to keep a full size mirror in your living room

so you have to look at your fat ass everytime you are home

great incentive

Chris McFarland

9:11 AM

I honestly just can't be bothered at the moment
would rather work or play
once I get sick of things again I'll go into full-on weight-loss mode again

comes and goes

Greg

righton then

anyway, i've been looking at the options for gps games and they are pretty dismal

i think its a ripe market

Kevin van der Velden

I've never really played any such games

Chris McFarland

GPS apps/games, 4Square?
there's also one that just keeps track of what areas you've visited
so it's supposedly cool to venture to areas you haven't been to before

Greg

im thinking more of like a proper game

Blue Bug

@UriPopov I got the game, can't play it cuz my comp doesn't keep up with the required specs.

Greg

9:13 AM

the biggest right now is ingress, you go around capturing and linking portals for points

Blue Bug

@KevinvanderVelden Whisper of temptation, u lead me to my doom man.

Greg

but i think the mechanics are sort of awful, you basically sit around a portal tracing symbols for long periods of time to get farm

and the person who drives to a portal more often captures it and wins that aspect

it kind of feels like the person willing to endure the most boredom wins, except they don't get paid like you do at work.

Chris McFarland

yeah

Greg

so im trying to figure out what exactly people would want to play

Chris McFarland

often with computer games, multiplayer ones, everyone's on the same playing field cuz everyone's sitting in front of a computer
I imagine once you add in physical issues like distance, transport, weather, actual free-time... becomes an uneven playing field

Greg

9:16 AM

that is true

anyone here have any experience with getting unreal games on a phone?

Uri Popov

not me

Shaun Wild

How much is overwatch on pc

Chris McFarland

$39.99 USD

Uri Popov

40$ right ?

Blue Bug

worth it

worth every dollar. the game is fantastic if u like fast paced fps game

Uri Popov

9:19 AM

am I passionate cs:go player. Will I like overwatch ?

Kevin van der Velden

Completely different games

Greg

its more like that tf2 i imagine?

Kevin van der Velden

Except faster paced and more indepth strategy (and less hats)

Uri Popov

@KevinvanderVelden less hats yet

Chris McFarland

skins galore

Uri Popov

9:21 AM

hats > skins

Greg

mittens > hats

Blue Bug

it has lower skill gap than TF2 or CSGO; you cannot dominate enemy team by urself no matter how good u r.

Chris McFarland

do you think if I desaturate the blood in my screenshots that Apple will approve it?

Greg

i dont even see any blood

Chris McFarland

Thanks
I will give it a shot

I tried to blur it but it looked dumb

Uri Popov

9:22 AM

What blood ?

Chris McFarland

I'm too lazy to code in an option to not have any blood appear

Uri Popov

Do the MK sega cheat. That would be a cool easter egg :D

Chris McFarland

what is it and what does it do?

Uri Popov

press A, B, A, C, A, B, B. If this was done correctly, the text will turn yellow and you will hear Scorpion say "Get over here!" This enabled blood in Mortal Kombat on the Sega genesis.

Chris McFarland

hah cool

Uri Popov

9:25 AM

or you can hide your blood like MK did it on the nintendo. They made the texture transparent. That should be easy to code :D

Chris McFarland

:)
Yeah I can code it if I have to
I just wanna see what I can get away with
cuz no blood is not representative of the game :/ but Apple is recently enforcing its policy that screenshots and videos have to be 4+ family-friendly
I'm gonna just remove my gameplay video too I think

they also don't like my decapitated heads but I'll see if desaturating them is good enough lol

Uri Popov

ahh Apple, how I hate thee.

Chris McFarland

Nintendo doesn't even care now
they just put an age gate before you view a listing
whereas Apple doesn't restrict things like that, is kinda dumb

Alexandre Vaillancourt

10:49 AM

Morning ppl!

Chris McFarland

Hello

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Today is Friday. (No Rebecca Black) This means that I'll have time to do shit soon :P

Chris McFarland

friday friday

Alexandre Vaillancourt

:P

Chris McFarland

Doing shit is good

Alexandre Vaillancourt

10:52 AM

Yeah; unfortunately, it won't have nothing to do with game dev I'm afraid :/

Chris McFarland

I compiled and sent off updates to two platforms today! and now a game before bed

awww

Leggy7

especially when you wake up in the morning and you need to release a lot

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Sister in law is getting married and I have to do some stuff for the event..

user92578

@ChrisMcFarland nice!

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@Leggy7 lol

@ChrisMcFarland yeah, nice!

user92578

10:54 AM

we got our last grades today

user92578

now I'm about to head off to a small picnic with my class

user92578

look at me, attending social situations and all :D

user92578

I've got the startings of a new song going on

user92578

Going with some really basic song structures

Uri Popov

Guys, does anyone know how I can bring a Unity UI object that is a layout Element in a horizontal layout group to be in front of all the other elements. Note that SetAsLastSibling() does notwork because this reorganizes the layout group.

Alexandre Vaillancourt

10:55 AM

@Tyyppi_77 you make the songs yourself? nice!

user92578

catchy synth tune -> drums in -> catchy synth tune with build up drums -> another catchy synth tune -> back to original synth tune -> fade out

user92578

@AlexandreVaillancourt ofc! soundcloud.com/olli-samuli-lehmus

user92578

two songs there

Alexandre Vaillancourt

haha nice man!

Chris McFarland

11:43 AM

@UriPopov I've heard you can add a CanvasRenderer to a child element and change its depth. I haven't tried it though, so not sure if it would inherit the auto-sizing and positioning

Uri Popov

11:56 AM

@ChrisMcFarland good idea but relativedepth does not have a set. Any idea how I can manipulate it ?

Chris McFarland

Hmm, maybe it was you add a child Canvas instead?

sorry I'm not much more helpful, this was some random Unity tip I read from one of the Unity employees in a tweet a while ago

Shaun Wild

Discuss: Java as a platform for 2D game development.

Kevin van der Velden

No.

</discussion>

Shaun Wild

LOL

Alexandre Vaillancourt

No one has ever done that.

Seriously, I don't see what there is to discuss about?

Shaun Wild

12:02 PM

hahaha

I have a lot of respect for a certain developer who has become a billionaire due to java games :P

So I just use Java

Alexandre Vaillancourt

Yeah. I won't recommend against it. Are you looking for reasons to not use it? Or are you trying to convince yourself that your decision is the right one by asking others?

DH.

The good part about Java games is that the community "hacks" your code and make a lot of custom stuff

So the community builds up the game, the updates from the real dev are almost meaningless

Uri Popov

@ShaunWild due to Minecraft being Minecraft. Its success has nothing to do with java

Shaun Wild

@UriPopov True. But it still is Java.

DH.

But the mods are only available because it was made with Java, otherwise if you needed to stick with vanilla game and vanilla server the game wouldn't be that big community

Uri Popov

12:17 PM

@DH. WHat!? So only java games can have mods ? Does minecraft being written in java make it more accessible to modding ? Yes. Can it have mods if it was written in Lisp? Yes given that the dev provided the right tools for modding.

DH.

Aaand Mojang made almost zero SDK for modding

So it being made with Java gave them time by saving work

Not saying it's impossible in other languages

Pip

o/

Kevin van der Velden

What was done is possible in quite a lot of languages. Basically the only requirement is for them to not be compiled

i.e. python or C# could have had the same thing, C or C++ can't

Pip

@Tyyppi_77 lucky you. We don't get out until the 23rd

@DH. that's not really true. The mods that are out there are mostly built on top of the community-built Forge SDK

Mojang has nothing to do with mods, Forge works by decompiling MC, adding it's own patches, then recompiling

To play with mods, you have to use the Forge runtime version (for both client and server)

Shaun Wild

12:34 PM

Decompiles, Deobfuscates, Wraps

Pip

So, TLDR Mojang saved no time or work because they don't actually support mods

Yeah, ofc it's deobf as well

Shaun Wild

Their deob is literally just a lookup table

It's quite clever

Pip

yep

Shaun Wild

does my picture grow as I send more messages

Kevin van der Velden

@UriPopov also of note: "given that the dev provided the right tools for modding" mojang didn't. Mojang has not given any help for modding that was the community

Shaun Wild

12:36 PM

test

Kevin van der Velden

@ShaunWild yes it does, no need to test

Shaun Wild

Hey, I can still have fun.

Kevin van der Velden

No. FUN IS DENIED

Shaun Wild

Aww

:c