/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

>>31381

go play similar games to what you are making and take inspiration from them.

>I've started hundreds of game projects in the last ten years, and finished none of them (with this being the furthest I've ever gotten so far)

Tell me about them, please

>>31395

And "Beginner's Guide" can suck it. This is what years of unfinished games actually looks like. Not a bunch of walking sims.

Sometimes you just have to force yourself to work. Go through the source code until you find something that looks like it can be improved. Go for the low hanging fruit first, do what you're good at before branching out.

I like to go on random word generators and generate a couple of words and try to make an idea inspired by these words, it got me some pretty original and interesting ideas

>>31270

This could only work if the game had no dialog but instead showed only vague images and sounds.

How could you have a fully dynamic suite of NPCs, that change and adapt a plotline based on a characters actions (the PC is just another character, NPCs would need to be affected by other NPCs in the same way as a PC), and still have dialog?

It would need to be abstract communication, which could work with some games and themes, but not in an RPG we're all talking about.

At the end of the day, someone has to write the dialog. It has to be hand done based on a set of known decisions and events (I can't write something I don't know happens), so that means the plot has to be hand configured anyway.

You can make a complex story and intertwined plot and events (a program called Twine is actually good for doing this, you can make a game in Twine actually) just with more time. More time means more complex story.

But you can't make it truely dynamic or emmersive. You can make it so large and complex that it seems like it, but that's all.

>>31352

To continue this thought now on a different machine.

Can you envision a dialog-less game that communicates through to the player based on only vague images and sound?

It would certainly cost less to localise all the text strings :)

Because if anyone here can think up a game where this would work, I think I could easily code up a basic implementation.

I'm thinking it would need to be strongly character driven, because the communication seems like it would be very "emotion" driven.

Love Hearts floating above characters, high-pitched excited sounds from a character, that sort of shit.

Actually, this sort of thing could already be present in a game like Crusader Kings.

>>31353

>>31352

>How could you have a fully dynamic suite of NPCs, that change and adapt a plotline based on a characters actions (the PC is just another character, NPCs would need to be affected by other NPCs in the same way as a PC), and still have dialog?

I posted >>31269 for a reason.

In order to have something truly dynamic and responsive to the player would be to build some low or mid level AI. Otherwise anons have pointed out the flaws: you can't pre-write dialogue for a scenario that is dynamically created by the system at run-time.

Large branching stories are one way to go about it. Having some kind of Mad Lib scenario could also add a small amount of variety.

>Dost thou love me?

>Y/N

>N

>But thou must!

I've wondered, though, if some kinda of program could be written to take the 6-8 basic story types (man vs man, man vs nature, etc etc) and start to build out stories from them. Give it a huge database of names, locations, etc. If all of this fiction we consume is so repetitive, why can't we boil it down to the basics and then build something up from there?

>>31385

I've personally contemplated this but never tried to implement.

As you say, there are 6 or 8 story types to chose from. There can be a database of potential "characters" to make them etc.

For example, Dwarf Fortress does an okay job of dynamically creating the "lore" of the world.

The trick is to dump the player into the middle. Every story would likely need to have the player as one of the characters.

But again. It's easy if it's just some quest markers and randomly created "dungeons". But how do you handle interesting character interactions etc?

>>31275

Honestly stop doing it. Everytime I did it I would totally lose my ability to program and dev for 1 week before recovering. This is because jacking off destroys your dopamine receptors, therefore no motivation and feeling miserable.

>>31329

My brain must be defective, as I can fap and then immediately start programming for fun.

>>31329

I disagree with the idea of going cold-turkey. A better idea, which is working quite well for me so far, is to use jerking off as a reward for completing enough work in each day. This change in behaviour is easier to make than just quitting full-stop and it even makes masturbation feel more rewarding.

>>31377

So then release it on itch.io or something, and then get some sales / required donations, and when you have a few thousand, tune up your game again, and announce a Steam remaster for money.

>>29484

Do you have gameplay you could upload as a video? Also, is this commercial, or just for fun? Either way, is there a site with more info or a download you can link to?

>>29485

I got a job and stopped working on this. If anyone wants, I can dump the project files here and they can take it over.

>>31355

well you have a "window" onto the map that you can view, so, at each level of the quadtree, you could just continue iterating down the tree in the nodes that intersect with the viewing window, and drawing the tiles in that node if it is a leaf.

Here is some pseudo-code:

typedef struct{
    uint16_t low_x, high_x, low_y, high_y;
}bbox_t

typedef struct qtnode_s{
    int16_t type;
    struct qtnode_s *children; //assume that this array only has 4 elements: its a QUAD tree after all
}qtnode_t;

void draw_quadtree(qtnode_t *node, bbox_t *view_window, bbox_t *bounding_box){
 
    //in this example, a negative type implies that the node is not a leaf of the tree.
    if(node->type > 0){
        //draw the tiles associated with this node if it is a leaf
        draw_tiles(node->type, bounding_box);
        return;
    }
 
    for(uint8_t i = 0; i < 4; i++){

        //create a new bounding box that is one quadrant of the old box
        bbox_t child_bbox = derive_bounding_box(bounding_box,i);

        //iterate deeper into the tree if it intersects the view window
        if(bbox_isect(child_bbox,view_window)){
            draw_quadtree(node->children[i],view_window, child_bbox);
        }
    }
}

Which might give you the right idea, of course since this is a kind of basic example I didn't do an optimization like holding all qtnode_t's in an array, and storing an index into that array. But it should give you an idea of how to iterate through such a data structure even if I didn't explain any of the helper functions in detail.

>>31356

I didn't answer the last question: since you are relying on overdraw to draw your scene correctly, you would always handle the red subtree first and the blue subtree last for all subtrees. So you thought of how it would work correctly

>>31357

Right. I think I got it now.

But this compression really only works where there's sparse detail right?

Oh but different aspects of a tile can each be in their own quadtree.... like types, is a road, etc etc?

>>30802

It's aimed for any game made with java,

but I do design it with libgdx in mind.

>>30753

If I understand what I'm looking at this is an interesting idea.

A similar setup would be great for a quest system, whereby quests are modules that receive messages and return a list of actions for a session/god object to deal with(As to keep the coupling between quests and core game loose).

So you... made an event handler, exposed a few things and called it a framework? Does Java not have C#-like events?

>Internally managing a tick timer, instead of letting the user define their own time scale

Pretty rigid and arbitrary in general, I think. I don't see much value to this myself. It still needs a lot of work to get it to what you describe, I think.

>>30854

yes absolutely, this is a very basic idea, that's why i was surprised that there isn't anything similar to java game devs..

Unity and unreal might have something similar in their shops, but I didn't really looked into it.

I tried to make the game mechanics as modular as possible, so managing the time ticker is kind of essential for it

It's definitely capable of being used for full games. It has been used for commercial games iirc(Sanctum I think?)

>>30794

use unreal 4, its like udk but better in every single way

>>30588

>Holy shit, you're right. Successfully implementing a new feature or fixing an annoying bug is nowhere as near as satisfying as completing a difficult level in a game.

Your personal values/preference/attitude are irrelevant to this conversation unless you're one of the people that abandoned game dev and came back to check up on the place. If that's the case, I can just ask you why you left.

>>30604

The main problem imo is that there's many different ways to make games. The approach changes completely on the very first step you'd take depending on how you want to make games.

It's like writing a tutorial for going to a shop, you could walk there, ride a bike, ride a car, take public transport, call a friend to take you, or call your grandma to go for you depending on your situation and preference. The detailed instructions to take in each case are completely different.

>>30589

It is

>>30613

I think we should create two separate guides: one for those who want to create games using full engines (Unity, GameMaker, Godot, Unreal, etc.) and one for those who want to create games using frameworks (Love2D, Pygame, MonoGame, SDL, etc.).

I also think we should create more articles for these tools on the wiki. It could tell people what they are getting into.

I don't think we need more traffic.

>>29290

>with one of the girls.

>one

>on a desert island

you need to get you're harem mindset on. men are naturally disposed to having several wives.

Me too. Stories are hard. Especially if you're trying to keep it short, I'm having a hard time justifying the events that happen.

I feel like story, dialogue, and characters are 3 different things. I get ideas for characters easily, like personality, mannerisms, etc. but suck hard at story and dialogue (in fact I've never really tried it).

>>29383

> I feel like story, dialogue, and characters are 3 different things. I get ideas for characters easily, like personality, mannerisms, etc. but suck hard at story and dialogue (in fact I've never really tried it).

Try imagining your characters in different situations. They're late for school. They're crushing on some guy/girl. They all go out to a bar/restaurant together and have to decide what kind of restaurant, what each of them will order and how they split the bill. Then consider their personality and mannerisms. What will they do? What will they say? How will the others react? There is your dialogue.

For a story, imagine some overarching goal with a beginning and end. If you're at a public pool, you might be a lifeguard. You might be training to join a swim team. Maybe you're going with family and you meet someone and start a relationship. Maybe something else.

To make a game out of it, have costs and benefits for different choices.

>>29243

topkek. moar!

Show sample images or GTFO

>>28863

A game where the main gameplay mechanic is the quality of assets. What I mean by that is that depending on an action you can change the graphic quality of an object or scene and by doing so you can make different realms of story go on or some shit. Like it would be cool if there was a VR game (I fucking hate VR but this idea would be cool) where you can lean forward through a hole or something and the graphics quality is trash. Or you look through a window and the quality is trash and all the surroundings is the most beautiful thing ever. Like the bad graphics make it hard to see stuff but if you do stuff the graphics get better and this can apply to a single object, a single scene, and/or an entire world.

>>28863

an rpg that is a mix of persona but the difference is a little more freedom and summons takes days before you can summon a demon or weapon and there is the typical alignment of good, neutral and evil but everything is grey in those regards.

So if you go full evil you will get cheap gains,magic and become more and more sick plus the game world will actively hunt you down and make things harder for the player character also you need to take a medicine day after day from not dying but when you go full evil you have to take more and more just to feed the summoned demon.

I'm not sure if action or turned based would be the right thing. Since at the night-time you are hunting demons, girls for sacrifices rituals and doing dungeon missions to kill a boss.

The story is basically just that hey you witnessed a divine event and you got speared by a demon/angel and now you have to survive a year, you have to hunt for the answers and there are only small clues onto what is really going on in the game world.

Game dev is not a hobby. It's a fucking job. Grow up.

>>30045

>I posted this exact thing in the QTDDOT sticky but got no answer and there was a typo in the post anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

because this is idea guy the thread

>>30067

Just tried it out today and realized I can't get a hello world script to work. Either it's a bug or I didn't setup the project correctly (I just ran the binary and and added a script to a new project+scene). In any case, I'll see if I can just use GDscript for the moment and switch over to C# when the next release comes out and my hello world script works.

>>30125

After a bit more fiddling I realized that the method GD.print() (One of the godot articles showed this for the new C#) was actually GD.Print()

Just a heads up if anyone else wants to start playing with it as well.

>>30362

Well fuck me, but I don't think the godot 3.0's going to be ready for a while. I guess I'll return to ideafagging and making "deep lore" in the mean time.

This depends on what you're trying to accomplish. It's also partially about the limitations of the engine you're dealing with.

If you want to track the player's position to execute some sort of event, using floored coordinates will give you a 'radius' where the event takes place, where exact coordinates would mean that the place where the event occurs is very, very precise.

What are you trying to accomplish with tracking the player's position?

Yes, floor them.

If you need to do any calculations on the coordinates, pass the raw unfloored ones in...then floor the result afterwards.