Game Development

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1700516

Damn.

10,000 puzzles and counting?

And I love puzzle games, but this seems excessive (but also tempting).

The great Jeff Vogel discusses the Unity event.

I working on an open source life simulation game with the working title Project Harmonia using Bevy.

It was an interesting task and I learned a lot about how meshes are represented internally.

Initially I used 8 vertices for each wall. But then I discovered that if I needed a different color and normal for each side, then I needed a different vertex! So I reworked the mesh generation to make 20 vertices per mesh (for each side with no bottom).

The 2013 StackExchange post [^1] describes what is now commonly called an "archetype" based ECS architecture that was implemented as compile time archetypes in the author's open source project in Feb 2018 ^3. A similar ECS model was described later in the June 2018 patent filed by Unity ^2 and active since 2020.

It's useful to bring visibility to the issue for the inevitable patent trolling that will occur in the future.

References: [^1]: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/58693/grouping-entities-of-the-same-component-set-into-linear-memory/

Saw this and thought it was really cool. It's still in an early state and is currently using a scripting system with an editor coming in the future, but it seems very polished and simple to use. Open source, too.

UPDATE: So, apparently it's mostly fake, taken from this article [translation] (where they even mention some kind of VCS).

However, even though it's not as absurd, it's a great read and a pretty wholesome story, so I recommend reading the article instead. And I'm even more convinced that this studio really does not deserve any of the hate they are getting.

Here is my summary of some of the interesting points from the article:

PocketPair started as a three man studio, passionate about game development, that couldn't find an investor for their previous games even though they've had really fleshed out prototypes, to the point where they just said "Game business sucks, we'll make it and release it on our own terms", and started working on games without any investor.

They couldn't hire professionals due to budget constraints. The guy responsible for the animations was a random 20-yo guy they found on Twitter, where he was posting his gun reload animations he self-learned to do and was doing for fun, while working as a store clerk few cities over.

They had no prior game development experience, and the first senior engineer, and first member of the team who actually was a professional game developer, was someone who ranomly contacted them due to liking Craftopia. But he didn't have experience with Unity, only Unreal, so they just said mid-development "Ok, we'll just throw away all we have so far, and we'll switch to Unreal - if you're willing to be a lead engineer, and will teach us Unreal from scratch as we go."

They had no budget. They literally said "Figuring out budget is too much additional work, and we want to focus on our game. Our budget plan is "as long as our account isn't zero, and if it reaches zero, we can always just borrow more money, so we don't need a budget".

For major part of the development, they had no idea you can rig models and share animations between them, and were doing everything manually for each of the model, until someone new came to the team and said "Hey, you know there's an easier way??"

It's a miracle this game even exists as it is, and the developer team sound like someone really passionate about what they are doing, even against all the odds.

This game is definitely not some kind of cheap cash-grab, trying to milk money by copying someone else's IP, and they really don't deserve all the hate they are receiving for it.

Has links to source code for all of the games showcased if you want to see the code of them

There are a lot of questions and intentions to move into gamedev from developers who are burnt out at their jobs. And that's okay. From my own experience, I have a couple of pieces of advice that are not very professional.

1. It won't save you from everything you're so tired of.

Firstly, game development, like other areas, is full of its own nuances and pitfalls. And given that a person gets used to everything, you will soon find yourself in the same position. It’s better to look at game development as a hobby, a distraction from your main job. Moreover, for the first few years you will still not be able to earn enough to support yourself and your family.

2. There are no universal tools.

The main question in any field of programming today is which framework and programming language to learn. Here everyone will choose their own - what they can master. But it’s worth noting that in game development when switching, for example, from web development, you need to understand that you won’t be able to use React or even JavaScript if you want to become a real pro. You have to be willing to study hard. These are low-level languages - C, C++, Rust, and the basics of mathematics and physics, and possibly machine learning. It won't be easy, you just have to keep going. Take a break and study further. There is no need to strive to immediately choose the top and most complex tools; the main thing is to start somewhere.

3. This is a market with tough players.

If you think that you can create a game in a couple of months and immediately start making money, then this is not so. Of course, you can try, but the network is already full of low-grade content, and sometimes you just wonder about the mental health of the “creator”. I think it’s better to create one project, but ideal, adequate and interesting.

4. Hype is temporary, and you only live once.

Lots of technologies, engines, etc. surrounded by a lot of hype. This is not bad for the creators of these things, but if you run after the clouds, you will never get anything done. Let your achievements be modest, but they will be yours. This will save you from burnout at your main job, otherwise there will only be dissatisfaction with yourself.

Add your own...

Knowing when to put the mouse and keyboard down is hard.

I made this quite detailed shader, but it only fills a tiny part of the screen... Like maybe the player will see this once or twice max, but the rest of the time this element will only take up 40x40 pixel area 😅

What techniques have you found that help to keep you on track and let you understand when it's time to stop?

This video shows the process of doing #gamedev using other, larger systems to develop software for the #Atari 2600 and 5200 game consoles using a cross assembler. This example contrasts a cross assembler from Sorcim running on #Atari8bit and #S100 hardware. Enjoy.

• REFERENCES

This video's notes: https://github.com/tschak909/cross-dev-game-video

Atari Macro Assembler Manual https://www.trailingedge.com/atari8/AtariMacroAssembler.pdf

MicroPro WordMaster 1.0 Manual https://wiki.polaire.nl/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=micropro_wordmaster.pdf

Dan Boris' PMDEMO: https://www.atarihq.com/danb/files/52pm.txt

CP/M 2.2 User Manual: http://www.cpm.z80.de/manuals/cpm22-m.pdf

MLOAD source code: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/z80playground/cpm-fat/main/mload.asm

Udo Monk's Z80PACK Emulation Suite: https://github.com/udo-munk/z80pack

Curt Vendel's Source-Code-Palooza (source code dump from Atari 9-track tapes): https://forums.atariage.com/topic/210244-source-code-palooza/

The Definitive Atari 2600 Combat Disassembly: https://www.qotile.net/minidig/disassembly/dicombat.asm

https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-3

This is the third one, and you can check out the previous one here! https://itch.io/jam/games-for-blind-gamers-2

We had 30 entries last year and are hoping to have even more wonderful entries this year! If you have any questions feel free to ask, or join the discord! https://discord.com/invite/Zd6B7vYBDx

• Unity Software said Monday that it would lay off about 1,800 employees, or 25% of its overall workforce, as part of a corporate restructuring plan.
• The company said it is unable to “reasonably estimate the costs and charges in connection with this reduction, which it expects will be substantially incurred in the first quarter of 2024.”
• In October, John Riccitiello retired as Unity’s CEO, while former Red Hat CEO James Whitehurst became interim CEO.

I've been browsing job posts lately and found a lot of poorly written posts looking for collaborators. Here's a blog post I wrote highlighting common pitfalls, and how to convince collaborators to join your project!

Do you have all your assets in a single .blend file for your game? Or do you have multiple .blend files, one per asset?

If you store all/most assets in a single .blend file, what blender features do you use to make sure you don't accidentally alter an unrelated asset while making changes to one asset?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1495034

The "Unending Layoffs" section goes starts at 2:44 of the video.

Lasts about 14 minutes, but it's quite powerful.

Also, I'm at around the 1:00:00 mark and they've mentioned the "live-service bubble" here and there. What can I say? I like Easy Alllies, or EZA, for comments like that. I wish there were more "leftist" gaming podcasts, but I believe that EZA aren't ostensibly "leftist" and I've only started listening to them within the last month.

They avoid politics for the most part, which is why I was surprised to hear all this.

Oh yeah, and they accepted their trans friend and she's a valued member on the show.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1469260

It's a good watch.

I didn't know about the Zelda theme that plays at the beginning of Ocarina of Time till now, for example.

Also, video is 25:44 in case you want to invest; I used the picture-in-picture option to switch tabs while watching it.

From GameFromScratch.com

My main issues are living in a country (Hungary), where a college degree would be almost mandatory for any dev jobs (mainly due to HR being dumb), also I'm disabled so my only job opportunity is a crappy government program one that pays half the minimum wage for full-time employment (!!!!!!), but this is the only no-12 hour shift and no-6AM starting option (most of which are also like 60+km from me, which means I would have to wake up even earlier, which isn't good for my health at all). however, not only a pay is very low, but also the 7AM starting is beginning to be way too much for my health. I'm already on sleeping pills to try to make myself fall asleep before midnight (almost impossible), and I also don't have the money to get my meds changed to something better at a private doctor. Of course no disability benefits, because "I'm not disabled enough", and otherwise I would just spend it on luxury cars (a common pre-2010 myth in Hungary was that disabled people could buy brand new Mercedeses).

I primarily have experience with game development (mainly from open source stuff), but without a long list of corporate experience, I have an even harder chance. I could work at other places too (I have some audio development experiences too), but would like to stay far away from web development.