Game Development

Jon

14:03

dude, release your game already!

user92578

needs levels

Jon

release editor first

user92578

editor is ingame

Jon

make it a selling point

"MAKE YOUR OWN LEVELS" "GAME THAT PROVIDES YOU WITH THE TOOLS TO MAKE YOUR OWN GAME!"

Almo

make sure it's in all caps, too

Jon

14:09

"SHARE LEVELS WITH OTHER PLAYERS USING THE SIMPLE 30 CHARACTER LEVEL CODES"

Oh wait, thats Nintendo.. sorry.

user92578

lol

user92578

I want to do Steam Workshop thingy level sharing eventually

Almo

Liking Offworld Trading Company. Still in tutorials, but it looks pretty good

far more polished than Civ IV was. (Designer of OTC was lead designer on Civ IV)

Jon

I seriously don't get Nintendo's online presence.

Almo

what online presence

Jon

14:11

It is so bad... its like they have no idea what the internet is

Plus, they force you to not share videos on youtube of their games without giving them a huge cut of your revenue

OH YOU FAN? FUCK YOU FAN YOU PAY

PearsonArtPhoto

Nintendo has always been about high royalties for their products...

Jon

It is strange, it doesn't state how much they take in the agreement

Check this out

Nintendo Co., Ltd. will calculate any such revenue share on a monthly basis. All amounts will be paid by Nintendo Co., Ltd. in U.S. Dollars (the arrival of the payment may be in a different currency depending on settings and functions provided under your PayPal account). Within 30 days following the end of each calendar month, Nintendo Co., Ltd. will pay any revenue share earned by you during the previous month to your PayPal account.

PearsonArtPhoto

I suspect one could take them to court on such for "fair use", but...

user92578

user92578

Sorry for spam, got collisions

Jon

14:17

apparently people are saying it is 40%

PearsonArtPhoto

If you are using their product to make the share, then they can charge what they want.

Jon

Youtubers that play video games for a living, have to give nintendo 40% of their revenue for nintendo games

PearsonArtPhoto

But if you have your own method to record the game, it seems likely you could just post the game and take them to court, claiming fair use.

Of course, most of Nintendo's games are fairly scripted, which might make that difficult to make the case...

Jon

the thing is

you don't pay them, they pay you

google pays nintendo

not you, lol.

PearsonArtPhoto

How does that work I wonder?

Jon

14:19

an agreement with Google / Youtube ?

PearsonArtPhoto

Do you upload the video of the game through the console?

Jon

no

you need to capture it yourself

PearsonArtPhoto

Then what do they do, search for any tags that might be related to a Nintendo game and pay directly to Nintendo?

Jon

hauppauge capture cards

PearsonArtPhoto

If that's the case, I would try to get other gamers together and sue Nintendo and/or Google. I know, long shot, but...

Jon

14:23

ncix.com/detail/…

there is actually a higher end version that captures 60fps instead of 30

PearsonArtPhoto

r.ncp.nintendo.net/guide

So you have to sign up for the program. You could not sign up for the program and take Nintendo to court.

Ere, they would take you to court, but you could contest it.

Mario Maker would be a pretty clear cut case of Fair Use I would think.

If I were devious, I would put YouTube videos about Mario Maker and just dare Nintendo to take me to court over it. But I'm not that brave...

DH.

Nintendo is a bitch

Almo

@AlexandreVaillancourt man that protect save file question must be a dupe

PearsonArtPhoto

How can they claim to own the content in Mario Maker. All they do is provide the sprites and engine...

A video of that is in a completely different form. I think that's a very straight forward Fair Use case. One that door is open once, then it's easier to open it further.

Almo

If the EULA says they own the content, then they own it.

Jon

14:37

Yeah, this was a hot debate when it came out

But everyone ate the shit

a lot of people actually ditched making nintendo videos altogether

Almo

yeah, which is the right response

Jon

why give 40% of your revenue stream when you can play something else.

for 0%

Almo

:D

PearsonArtPhoto

Nintendo owning the levels make some sense, but the videos...

Almo

They really don't understand that millions of people watching youtube of your game makes you money

Jon

14:39

They don't own the levels.

its all user created.

well.... they own the content

but i'm saying is that users created all the millions of levels.

nintendo made a handful of them.

PearsonArtPhoto

I don't recall ever agreeing to anything using Mario Maker...

Sure, I'm aware of that...

Okay, I guess the EULA is for the console as a whole... Sigh.

Jon

hahaha

pwned

I personally was pretty excited for zelda , hyping it for my son.... now I have to get the friggen NX to play it properly

I feel it might not be worth my effort anymore, nintendo.

The wiiU was a piece of shit.

PearsonArtPhoto

nintendo.com/consumer/info/en_na/docs.jsp

Jon

The ONLY good game for the wiiU, is mariomaker.

No legit mario game

no legit zelda game

PearsonArtPhoto

There isn't a single thing in there that I see that says you can't record video...

Jon

14:44

shit starfox reboot

SSB is also good.

PearsonArtPhoto

Zelda and Mario are the only reasons to get a Nintendo so far as I'm concerned...

I did like Hyrule Warriors, but that's a short lived game...

Jon

WiiU , they gave up on it

PearsonArtPhoto

SSB is good, that's true.

Jon

they gave up on it a long time ago

PearsonArtPhoto

It's a pity. They COULD have made it decent, they just gave up.

Jon

14:45

I wish I would have never bought the silly contraption

anyways

There is always a hope that the NX is going to return nintendo to their roots

DH.

Even AAA companies gave up on Nintendo

If someone makes a OUYA that's actually good, it would overcome Nintendo

Jon

well, they are going to unveil zelda at e3

PearsonArtPhoto

I don't thing there's been any, at least not many, AAA games for Nintendo, since, what, the 64?

Jon

albeit those shows are all about the hype train

DH.

Wii had some AAA

Jon

14:48

Bayonetta 2

Bayonetta 2 (ベヨネッタ 2, Beyonetta Tsū) is an action hack 'n' slash video game developed by PlatinumGames and published by Nintendo for the Wii U. It is the sequel to the 2009 game Bayonetta, and was directed by Yusuke Hashimoto and produced by Atsushi Inaba and Hitoshi Yamagami from Nintendo, under supervision by series creator Hideki Kamiya. Bayonetta 2 was announced on September 13, 2012 exclusively for Wii U, unlike the previous game which was released on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The titular character, Bayonetta, sports a new costume and hairstyle and the game itself features a new two...

PearsonArtPhoto

Okay, fair enough.

DH.

Oh yeah and Bayonetta 2

But f*ck Bayonetta, we had Metal Gear Revengeance: same studio, better game on better platforms

Almo

@DH. not really

inhomogeneous hardware does not suit console gaming

OUYA's just a bad idea because Android is not good for console dev. It just takes a bunch of the hassles of mobile dev and adds them to console dev. I'd avoid the thing like the plague as a developer.

DH.

Yeah, they could build it over Linux to be a bit better, but Android, really...

Almo

yeah

DH.

14:53

My Android Studio gives errors by himself, that IDE is just insane

Jon

Error: Hey, I was just lonely, there isn't really any errors...

Almo

weird too because PHPStorm and Webstorm are quite good.

it's like google took the jetbrains core IDE and made android studio

google are lousy at making tools

Alexandre Vaillancourt

@Almo Yeah :S I can't resist to answer questions with 'You can't.' :/

Almo

I love saying "no" as well. It's fun!

Alexandre Vaillancourt

15:15

Break their illusions! :p

Almo

:D

Jon

you never said no to me @Almo

Almo

heheh

DH.

15:46

Maybe because he wants you to be frustrated

Or because you're already smart enough

Almo

Jon's pretty smart

rhymes with...

Alexandre Vaillancourt

smelly fart?

Jon

jon's a self-proclaimed genius, rhymes with?

Almo

woa

the OTC designer's blog says "Josh Hardy, after being lured away from the Star Control team"

Somebody is making another Star Control game...

I sure hope they get somewhere near II's brilliance.

Jon

oh no...

Almo

15:52

III was pretty not good

DH.

Oh Almo, did you see that they are making a Warhammer: Dawn of War 3?

Darth_Wardy

Discord - Don't Be A Broom

►

Almo

@DH. did not :)

"Some of the information in the FAQ has already been revealed: The game will take place in the year 2112 following humanity's first contact with an alien species, it will establish a separate continuity from that of the "Ur-Quan timeline" of the first two games" Hmm this indicates some suck

Jon

16:25

phl.upr.edu/library/notes/SETIChallenge

anyone want to attempt to crack this with me?

right off the bat, I would need to guess that the delimiter is a block of characters

well, i mean, there is no delimiter

but then if you look at it closer, it starts with a bunch of 11111111111, then all 0

then gradually near the end.. looks exponential, goes back to 1

user92578

@Darth_Wardy man that was awesome

user4704

I like Discord well enough (way better than Mumble). But I'm not sure where they are going to be making money.

user92578

yeah, that's a good point

user4704

I can't fully trust anything when I can't tell how it makes money.

user4704

Basically right now it's "we gots lots a VC cash, no worries man"

user4704

16:34

Which generally means "we hope we're going to get bought and cash out, and somebody else will handle the monetization of the result."

user4704

I feel like it's really unlikely that any kind of workable ad-support model can't sustain the bandwidth costs.

DH.

Well, WhatsApp doesn't make a penny, and its running

user4704

Right. WhatsApp got bought.

Darth_Wardy

@Tyyppi_77 i know right :)

user92578

Don't use a broom

DH.

16:37

Since Discord is 100% directed to gamers, I don't think anybody will buy that

I mean, you can use that for anything, but it's not its focus

user4704

You'd buy it for the same reason you'd buy WhatsApp.

user4704

You want the customers and/or the technology.

user4704

I don't think the technology is all that novel, as far as I'm aware -- it works great, but it's nothing revolutionary.

DH.

Yeah IKR, but WhatsApp got a whole world using it, even business are using it

user4704

So that means you'd buy it for the users.

user4704

16:40

Amazon, for example, could buy them. They bought Twitch and it seems like a related area.

user4704

(Twitch is far more easily monetized though)

user4704

But Amazon spent almost a billion on Twitch, so it's not inconceivable that Discord, which is only somethign like $30 million in from investors, could be hoping to get bought out at $50+ million.

Darth_Wardy

dont use a broom

Jon

ok so i figured out that there is a repeating pattern of 358 0s

user4704

Hm, Tencent's an investor in Discord.

user4704

16:43

Maybe they'd buy them.

DH.

Oh, the same one that bought over 50% of Riot?

user4704

Yeah.

user4704

The most marketable asset Discord will end up with at this point is the social graph of their users, which is naturally tailored towards gamers, so it's gotta be either a game or social company that buys them. Amazon, Tencent or Facebook would be my top three guesses for who they'd be trying to court internally.

user4704

Maaaaybe Google a close fourth.

user92578

16:52

Aight I got doors opening to both directions now

user4704

I don't really think Google would get anything new out of the graph though.

Sie

Something... something... if it's free you're the product.

user4704

@Tyyppi_77 Shoulder-tackle animation required.

user4704

Looks pretty good though.

user92578

Man, that would be awesome but might be really hard to execute with the guns and all

user92578

16:53

And thanks!

user4704

The "bars" look a little odd if you scrutinize the animation closely.

user92578

yeah, it's hard to do that stuff really properly

user92578

also, even width and 1 pixel wide bars

user4704

yea

Jon

right in the middle of that document is a span of 10100 1's

what the hell is that supposed to indicate?

Sie

16:56

Finally added a rudimentary weapon swapping system. The glitches are pretty funny to say the least. I suppose I should just add a bool to each of their scripts to tell if they are active or not and then check if they are active or not upon swapping and if they are disable them?

user92578

you parsing with regex, right?

Jon

i'm writing code to analyze the data atm

user92578

whatcha writing that in?

Jon

c#

user92578

I would personally have picked Python, could just open up an interpreter and start looking

user92578

16:58

"oh I wonder if it has this" that.thisProcess(data)

Darth_Wardy

medium.com/@playwellco/…

6

Sie

nbc4i.com/2016/05/04/…

Jon

it starts with 755 repeats

1 and then 358 0's

it does this 755 times to start off the document

except for the very first part -- it prints out 359 1's

359,358
1,358
1,358
.....

Sie

Do you guys suppose a game like Portal could work with procedurally generated levels? Kind of like Binding of Isaac does it. The level selection is random but they are of set templates just lots of them.

Jon

the puzzles would suck

user4704

17:08

@Sie "Yes," but a lot of what makes Portal interesting is the puzzles and the narrative structure.

user4704

Both of which benefit significantly from being hand-authored.

Sie

Plus each level builds upon the previous concepts.

user4704

So it wouldn't be very fun or compelling. It could probably technically be done and/or made functional.

Jon

this is a multi part message

gah, whatever, i'm not gonna solve this

Sie

I have no idea what I'm going to do narrative wise. Basically your're some one who got stuck in a world made of paper, you're able to deform/manipulate vertices, and you have to solve puzzles to get out of each area.

Jon

17:11

ah they are coordinates.

Sie

A part of me wonders how well Portal would have done if it had a shitty story. I mean I think ultimately the Portal concept of portals is what made it a hit success but the story no doubt played a factor in it's success too.

Game development wise it feels like Valve is too big to fails sometimes.

MickLH

@Jon There's a way to fix this

Invert the system

Procedurally generate a fun to play solution, then algorithmically generate a puzzle with that solution

you could have an "infinite hallway" map where each door leads to level of equivalent complexity with the random seed set at the number on the door :P

Almo

17:29

they're making another space jam movie? the first one wasn't very good.

Sie

They are? The first one was a giant advertisement iirc.

Almo

yeah

MickLH

@Sie idk seemed exactly like any other sports media to me

I wouldn't call it "giant", just an advertisement

Almo

right; I expected it to be a movie, not sports media

MickLH

lol

Almo

17:35

Changed that phrasing

Darth_Wardy

@Sie the world needs another portal game, if you build something half as good as portal im buying it!

Jon

cracked it

in unity, ehe

there is more... scales and stuff

Sie

@Darth_Wardy Trying to lol. If you'd like to see what I'm working on you check here. In the next couple of days I have a big update in the works.

Jon

buuuuut i think i'm gonna stop here

MickLH

@Sie If you build (2^64)^n portal games with n > 2 I'd buy it :P

Darth_Wardy

17:39

@Sie interesting

@Sie sounds like your requirement of the use of a vive headset is holding you back ... personally I would just build the game using conventional controls then bolt on the VR headset support later

if your architecture is reasonably well structured it shouldn't be too hard to do

Sie

@Darth_Wardy It's not a requirement for the end user. Basically I've been trying to do just that. Build the game with traditional controls and then implement the Vive as I go along.

Darth_Wardy

ah fair enough

I must be in a minority because i genuinely think that where we are now with VR is akin to the mobile phone in the 90's ... they were big brick like things that actually wern't that great and stupid money to own

I'm prob gonna wait a couple generations before I get in to VR

MickLH

There should be a VR that has electrodes and thermal control and can simulate gunshot wounds

Sie

Meanwhile the Oculus is busy screwing themselves over. Palmer can't say a word without contradicting himself a month later and they can't figure out shipping either evidently.

Darth_Wardy

17:55

@MickLH b....b....b...but it's super real man!!!

How about instead of playing call of duty people just join the army

user4704

@Jon Creepy.

Jon

was easier than i expected

the first 359 1's actually indicate the length of the image

its multipart data -- so the first half of the data is actually the background of the second part

i didn't feel like lining it up i'm satisfied now

man...

i hate people that call URL earl

EARL!!!! THE EARL STRUCTURE!!!

Almo

18:17

woa... never herd that b4

Jon

i am ready to ask him who earl is

then go "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh U R L"

Then ask him to start over

luckily he is competent

Almo

18:44

looks like duelyst will release new cards each month

4 more for may

Pip

o/

Almo

programmer I played LoL with here at BHVR, who was here last Friday, is gone now. Died monday or tuesday. He was in his 20s, and it's just hitting me now that I'm really upset about it.

Sie

Mage update is live.

@Almo That's terrible dude. Sorry for your loss.

Almo

thanks

Sie

19:00

This fog looks awesome but I'm not paying $45 for it: assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/49858

Wonder if I can replicate that.

PearsonArtPhoto

I'm confident given enough time you could.

The question is, how much time do you want to spend?

Almo

$45 fuckin bargain

that looks really nice, and if you pay yourself minimum wage, you'd never, ever come up with that in 5 hours

Ethan Bierlein

it looks amazing

DH.

If it renders without giving too much of a drop in your frame rate, it is really worth it

Sie

Might pick it up then. It does look very good.

Jon

19:20

buy all the assets

Leggy7

20:20

anyone here who has already sold games on steam?

Almo

cube4you.com/cube4you-gigaminx-v4white-p-129.html?cPath=26_35

chrismcfarland has

"Cube4you new product , it taked some months , it's turn well now ."

@ChrisMcFarland hey so how are you finding clash royale?

I still dig it

will probably play for quite some time

Chris McFarland

20:48

It's the first mobile game I've allowed notifications for :P

I find some of the combat kind of hard, but that's half the fun -- do I wait and try to counter what my opponent plays, or do I go for the zerg rush and hope they can't counter me

@Leggy7 yeah I have!

just talk in here lol

Lately my strat is to play smartly, wait to counter best I can. once I destroy one tower, go full defense mode (assuming they haven't taken any of my towers)

Almo

@ChrisMcFarland haha yeah they're useful (notifs)

Sie

I wonder. What type of FPS game would work if you throttled it to 1FPS?

Almo

@ChrisMcFarland I've gotten as far as 31 seconds left of overtime before the first unit was placed

because there's no advantage to going first :)

Chris McFarland

hahahahahaha

yeah

Almo

they need to fix that, in my opinion. I don't see any other holes though

Chris McFarland

20:59

it's a well-crafted, short, stressful game

plus cool graphics and sounds

Almo

agreed

got someone else joining the clan as soon as they hit level 3

graphic designer on the project i'm on

Chris McFarland

nice
I got my wife hooked, I'll see if she's hit level 3 later

Almo

cool

my wife's going to try it

Sie

God I wish I had the money to hire some team members. I'd hire a graphic designer in a heart beat.

Almo

not sure she'll dig the progression thing, she's never played a levelling type game before

closest she's come was levelling heroes in warcraft III

Sie

21:03

Email-Worm.Win32.Loveletter (ILOVEYOU Worm)

►

16 year anniversary.

Leggy7

21:54

@ChrisMcFarland oh sure, I actually wanted to hear some feedback from your experience in selling your Tallowmere on steam. What's with the greenlight proces, has it enough visibility just because it is on steam or you needed to promote it somehow?

William Mariager

Promote promote promote!

60% of being an indie is promoting. :P

Leggy7

yes, that is indeed the beginning of the answer I expect :)

Then I'm really anxious to hear what kind of promotion could lead to enough visiblity for your game to the audience

Almo

GDSE chat people posting it on facebook, obviously

Leggy7

just that?

5k friends on how many accounts?

ahhh ok you mean I say here guys I need some boost? :)

and so unleash the hounds?

Almo

:)

Chris McFarland

22:09

I didn't really have a large audience I don't think, nor did my game look the best, and my trailer was/is kind of bad, so I had like 40% Yes votes and 60% No votes. I sat in the Greenlight queue for 6 months before getting lit.
Whereas some of my gamedev friends here in NZ recently, their games get a lot of Yes votes cuz their games look good and it takes them one week to get greenlit lol

but yes, Greenlight is the way for unknown developers to get noticed by Valve and onto Steam

I'll be required to make my upcoming sequel go through the Greenlight process still

but yeah, videos, blogs, streams, tweets, fb posts, reddit posts, indiedb, tigsource, local gamedev meetups.... build your audience as you develop

shortly after launching my greenlight campaign, I also took an offer to be included in a bundle: groupees.com/bagb7

yet it still took me 6 months to get greenlit lol, so I dunno if it was worth it

Also, I was selling on IndieGameStand and itch.io before greenlight (and during), so maybe was some extra exposure there too

but it's not necessary. Just make a fun, awesome-looking game, create lots of gifs, make a nice video

Almo

Cognizer unfortunately does not video well

Impossible to tell what's going on just from video. Well, unedited video. with voiceover and effects showing what's going on it could work.

Chris McFarland

The big fancy games have lots of art, characters, story, world/environment themes, despite whatever the gameplay is
yeah

Almo

but it's not like tallowmere where 5 sec of raw game footage and you say "OH action rpg platformer"

which for some people is all they need to know

Chris McFarland

like those whole Bubble Witch games or whatever? simple match game thing, but it's the art that wins it over eh

yeah

Almo

yeah

Chris McFarland

22:20

This game was lit recently, Swordy: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=665144668
took 6 days to get lit

I've been to the devs' house, they're a cool bunch haha

mind you, they've gone to the Gamedev Conference in San Fan with Microsoft and stuff, bit of a backing behind them!

Almo

:D

Chris McFarland

I'd love to hit up PAX Aus or something

Almo

looks like a lot of fun

I'm sure I've seen this before

Chris McFarland

but man, it's hard by myself
and leaving my wife at home for a few days with 2 kids lol
and me needing help to talk about my game to attendees, they say your throat dies basically

Almo

yeah

Chris McFarland

22:23

and setting up banners and a couple machines for demos, and ahhhhhh lol
plus need money haha
Could always hire a friend to come along for a few days maybe..... Need to get my game going first ;)

I dunno, expos or not, a good game sells itself these days through game sites and reddit and steam even

DH.

yeah get to the front page and the game will sell by itself

Chris McFarland

I also wanna do a modest Kickstarter, if only for the extra development attention

Sie

22:41

Getting ready to complete my final exam. Wish me luck... or death. Whichever you prefer.

Chris McFarland

good luck

Sie

@ChrisMcFarland That's not a half bad idea. Set it low like at $100 or so and then get attention plus extra money (maybe).

How do you guys typically bring attention to your games? I try to do bi-weekly dev logs/posts but the first one I made got a lot of attention but after that point it kind of fell of. I usually post them over to /r/gamedev but usually they only get like 5-6 upvotes and 0 comments.

Chris McFarland

I don't adhere to a schedule, just make a vid or write a post or upload a gif and tweet whenever the mood strikes

Schedules are kinda boring if there's not enough development that's newsworthy to write about

Sie

I do it for me personally. i just like writing about certain things related to game development. I usually get around 100 or so page views each time I post one. Now a whole lot but at least a few people seem interested.

I do worry sometimes that I might be giving too much away though.

Chris McFarland

It's okay to share
really though, people just want to play and experience the playable fun product

the rest is just noise, though it can help to build hype

even those announcements that are just announcing that there's going to be an announcement? it's just hype-building lol

Sie

22:49

ya those are annoinyg

Here is a teaser that literally showcases zero gameplay. have fun. Anyway gotta go.

SahibPrime

23:00

i don't even think my game engine IS a game engine

PearsonArtPhoto

23:21

I'm pretty sure I'm going to do a kickstarter at some point. I was thinking something low, but not that low...

I'm thinking of doing a kickstarter with the main focus being on different stretch goals.

Sure, I'll put in some fun rewards etc, but basically I'm thinking of specking out how much to do nice graphics, how much to do sound effects, etc, and use them as stretch goals.

So maybe $1000 will have me release the game on Steam, $5K will give it the best graphics I can make, $10K will hire a graphic designer, $20K will higher a sound designer, $30K will higher a UI designer. Numbers completely made up, BTW, but...

But if I do it for real, I'll get a few quotes before I make the page to have a better estimate.

I'm thinking take the price they quote and double it, to cover extras.

Pip

23:58

That's not a bad idea

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