Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[KafkaBot]

That being said, it's mostly for tech demos and porn. That's what's most popular on the site.

This is actually something that annoys me somewhat; Itch is essentially seen as some sort of early access platform or a place where you can get people to pay to beta test your game. Not too long ago a small studio released a game on Steam almost one year after putting it on itch.io because, according to them, "a Steam release" should be fully polished. They did that even though their game was released for free on both Itch and Steam.

It saddens me a bit, won't lie. Itch is a cool platform with nice features that could easily be a "GOG for indies", but no one really seems to take it all that seriously - not even its users.

 

[Twiglard]

Had a fair bit of trouble implementing this, and it's not very efficient, math was never my strong suit. I should probably find some good geo/trig textbooks and brush up on the material, see if I can rewrite it later down the line to be more accurate and efficient.

Maybe try asking questions. This orientation, projection, inverse projection stuff can be done using elementary school math, just need to treat a few concepts as black boxes. If you're using orthographic projection, it's even easier and doesn't require trig.

 

[baboogy]

Testing textured ceilings/floors. Had a fair bit of trouble implementing this, and it's not very efficient, math was never my strong suit. I should probably find some good geo/trig textbooks and brush up on the materia

This isn't hard, especially if you're using Doom-style orthographic 2.5D rendering rather than perspective (then you don't need matrices and trig at all to project 3D -> 2D). Orthographic camera projection is so simple you only need elementary school math.

If perspective projection is what you want— the code to create a camera matrix from yaw/pitch/roll values you can treat as a black box rather than re-derive yourself. In order to compose rotations, just multiply the matrices. Then in order to project 3D to 2D, you simply multiply the vec4(xyz, 1) with the 4x4 matrix.

Of course it helps to prototype on the CPU at least some wireframe drawing.

I have a lot of trouble wrapping my head around / visualizing 3D spaces. The math doesn't come that easy to me either- I'm sure to some people it isn't hard at all

It's all currently done in software. No fancy matrix/vector math, just some geometry and trig. I'm sure it could be simplified even further than it currently is but I want to get it working right first.

Had a fair bit of trouble implementing this, and it's not very efficient, math was never my strong suit. I should probably find some good geo/trig textbooks and brush up on the material, see if I can rewrite it later down the line to be more accurate and efficient.

Maybe try asking questions. This orientation, projection, inverse projection stuff can be done using elementary school math, just need to treat a few concepts as black boxes. If you're using orthographic projection, it's even easier and doesn't require trig.

A lot of this I'm trying to derive/figure out myself, having fun doing it. But I definitely think I will have questions at some point. There are a few more rendering problems along these lines with perfect alignment of walls/floors that I don't 100% understand and if I really can't figure it out I'll have to come here and ask about it.

Orthographic projection is a bit different right, all same objects are the same height at any distance? I'm not super familiar with the concept. Skimming it online probably what I'm doing is closer to perspective projection since I'm casting rays.

 

[Tyranicon]

This is actually something that annoys me somewhat; Itch is essentially seen as some sort of early access platform or a place where you can get people to pay to beta test your game.

Itch does kind of market itself as a casual alternative to steam, which is part of the draw. Everything about working with Itch, registering, financials, uploading builds, etc is generally easier and more hassle-free. Also no 100 USD buy-in to release a game.

This means that devs with less overall experience flock to it, giving Itch a different reputation. I think this is slowly changing though. Itch is already considered a serious contender.

 

[Twiglard]

Orthographic projection is a bit different right, all same objects are the same height at any distance?

Doom uses an orthographic projection, as lines in parallel in the world geometry are parallel on the screen regardless of the observer's position and orientation. It scales the sprite by its center's distance to the viewer. Scaling the entire sprite by a scalar number is sometimes called weak perspective projection. If you're drawing textures on the CPU using a 2.5D projection, the old-school scanline algorithm doesn't produce any distortion.

Maybe learning (in a non-algebraic way) about (yaw, pitch, roll) rotation (they're Tait-Bryan angles) and translation could help you get the necessary intuition. You can transform the position and orientation of the camera in arbitary order, as well as compose transforms together (sometimes they're called affine transforms). None of this requires understanding trig or what a cross product is.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

A game I programmed was released this year. I was only a lead programmer, the game director was the guy with the money and he wanted things done his way or the high way. Some of the game design wasn't good, I debated it with him until blue in the face, then eventually he couldn't take it anymore and became kinda hostile to any feedback I gave, so I stopped giving it. I managed to convince him to make some changes at the beginning, but it was a drop in the ocean.

Two things to say now that it's released.

1. You give a big portion of yourself to a project and then see streamers go "what a shit game man haha I'm uninstalling" - it's soul crushing.
I've heard people use the expression, but I never experienced it before. And it's not even your fault, and your couldn't have done anything else. The programming part you delivered did its job.

2. Whenever the design doc was lacking in details, I filled in the gaps with my own ideas of how things should be. There's definitely a portion of my game design in it.
Example: the streamers (I watched a lot of them for days) could never figure out how to split the stack in the inventory. They ended up convinced that it's unsplittable. It was terrible seeing this.
I did it like in World of Warcraft, but apparently that didn't translate at all. If we had playtesters, I would've seen it and changed it, but we were on a tight budget.
Looking at these design decisions (that are mine) falling flat on their face, big time, was another soul crushing experience. Not even humbling, but soul crushing.

To have a game you worked on super hard come out to "REVIEWS: NEGATIVE" on Steam is one of the saddest things you can get in any profession. I didn't understand how people could get emotional about their games before or talk so much about them 20 years later like Tim Cain does. Now I see.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

A game I programmed was released this year. I was only a lead programmer, the game director was the guy with the money and he wanted things done his way or the high way. Some of the game design wasn't good, I debated it with him until blue in the face, then eventually he couldn't take it anymore and became kinda hostile to any feedback I gave, so I stopped giving it. I managed to convince him to make some changes at the beginning, but it was a drop in the ocean.

Two things to say now that it's released.

1. You give a big portion of yourself to a project and then see streamers go "what a shit game man haha I'm uninstalling" - it's soul crushing.
I've heard people use the expression, but I never experienced it before. And it's not even your fault, and your couldn't have done anything else. The programming part you delivered did its job.

2. Whenever the design doc was lacking in details, I filled in the gaps with my own ideas of how things should be. There's definitely a portion of my game design in it.
Example: the streamers (I watched a lot of them for days) could never figure out how to split the stack in the inventory. They ended up convinced that it's unsplittable. It was terrible seeing this.
I did it like in World of Warcraft, but apparently that didn't translate at all. If we had playtesters, I would've seen it and changed it, but we were on a tight budget.
Looking at these design decisions (that are mine) falling flat on their face, big time, was another soul crushing experience. Not even humbling, but soul crushing.

To have a game you worked on super hard come out to "REVIEWS: NEGATIVE" on Steam is one of the saddest things you can get in any profession. I didn't understand how people could get emotional about their games before or talk so much about them 20 years later like Tim Cain does. Now I see.

What game was it?

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

What game was it?

Have you seen the shit I say on these forums? It's a decision I made early on, years ago - this account has to be anonymous.
I've doxxed myself to some people in private, but I hope this never comes back to bite me in the ass.

 

[Catacombs]

this account has to be anonymous.

I've doxxed myself to some people in private

Bad idea.

 

[baboogy]

Orthographic projection is a bit different right, all same objects are the same height at any distance?

Doom uses an orthographic projection, as lines in parallel in the world geometry are parallel on the screen regardless of the observer's position and orientation. It scales the sprite by its center's distance to the viewer. Scaling the entire sprite by a scalar number is sometimes called weak perspective projection. If you're drawing textures on the CPU using a 2.5D projection, the old-school scanline algorithm doesn't produce any distortion.

Maybe learning (in a non-algebraic way) about (yaw, pitch, roll) rotation (they're Tait-Bryan angles) and translation could help you get the necessary intuition. You can transform the position and orientation of the camera in arbitary order, as well as compose transforms together (sometimes they're called affine transforms). None of this requires understanding trig or what a cross product is.

Thank you, I'll read up on these concepts and try to get a better grasp on the visualization aspect.

That first part does sound more or less like what I am currently doing. I'm casting lines by screen width and checking tiles along the way, scaling their height on the screen (drawn outwards from the center) as the inverse of their distance from the player multiplied by the number that the sprite's size on the screen should be at a single unit distance from the camera. More or less what wolf3d does but I support a few more things it doesn't. Floor/wall pixels I draw as some calculation I did using the ratio of their angle to the player and FOV angle. Then entities are drawn in using a depth buffer in a similar way (sprite height is inverse of distance).

 

[RaggleFraggle]

nevermind

 

[shihonage]

Which video service is best for posting game engine videos w/music? Youtube is gestapo. I see people using Vimeo and Rumble, can you get shot down by copyright there?

 

[NoMoneyNoFameNoDame]

A game I programmed was released this year. I was only a lead programmer, the game director was the guy with the money and he wanted things done his way or the high way. Some of the game design wasn't good, I debated it with him until blue in the face, then eventually he couldn't take it anymore and became kinda hostile to any feedback I gave, so I stopped giving it. I managed to convince him to make some changes at the beginning, but it was a drop in the ocean.

Two things to say now that it's released.

1. You give a big portion of yourself to a project and then see streamers go "what a shit game man haha I'm uninstalling" - it's soul crushing.
I've heard people use the expression, but I never experienced it before. And it's not even your fault, and your couldn't have done anything else. The programming part you delivered did its job.

2. Whenever the design doc was lacking in details, I filled in the gaps with my own ideas of how things should be. There's definitely a portion of my game design in it.
Example: the streamers (I watched a lot of them for days) could never figure out how to split the stack in the inventory. They ended up convinced that it's unsplittable. It was terrible seeing this.
I did it like in World of Warcraft, but apparently that didn't translate at all. If we had playtesters, I would've seen it and changed it, but we were on a tight budget.
Looking at these design decisions (that are mine) falling flat on their face, big time, was another soul crushing experience. Not even humbling, but soul crushing.

To have a game you worked on super hard come out to "REVIEWS: NEGATIVE" on Steam is one of the saddest things you can get in any profession. I didn't understand how people could get emotional about their games before or talk so much about them 20 years later like Tim Cain does. Now I see.

I know the feel man. Except I actually made everything in my game myself. The outcome however is the same. You need very good anti-retard tech and design decisions
or people will find a reason to get frustrated and quit.

Worse yet you probably can't go fix those issues can you? I can actually clean up my shit if i really wanted to.

All I can say is you can learn from this and go make another game. Also you're right not to tell codex about your game unless they are your target demographiic like Redaxium 2 was.
But a good way to end up poor is to make codexers a target demographic when you yourself are one. Didn't DU or tallytooting have some bizarre ascii game where you could explore it in,
but it was builtin to codex. But what happened? It's gone now, that's what happened. So either they realize we aren't a reliable bunch or that we can't be trusted to be a primary demographic.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Which video service is best for posting game engine videos w/music? Youtube is gestapo. I see people using Vimeo and Rumble, can you get shot down by copyright there?

You could license some music or use royalty-free music. There's tons out there. You might be surprised at how good the quality is and how cheap you can license music. You don't even need to go to those music libraries. The Unity Asset Store has tons that you can use.

 

[shihonage]

Which video service is best for posting game engine videos w/music? Youtube is gestapo. I see people using Vimeo and Rumble, can you get shot down by copyright there?

You could license some music or use royalty-free music. There's tons out there. You might be surprised at how good the quality is and how cheap you can license music. You don't even need to go to those music libraries. The Unity Asset Store has tons that you can use.

Youtube is an unsuitable service for anything serious, too many ads.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Spent some time upgrading and updating the jam game to the point where I thought I should put it on Steam to measure player interest in a simple Mordor-style crawler.

 

[CryptRat]

I would have asked if you had considered instant movement as an option so teleporter scrolls are a welcome addition.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I would have asked if you had considered instant movement as an option so teleporter scrolls are a welcome addition.

Well, think of it this way -- the combat is automatic and time-based, so anything that changes the intended speed can become an exploit to weasel one's way through rooms full of monsters. That's why teleporter scrolls and paid fast travel became a thing -- they save time, but scrolls have to be purchased first (and price increases with each purchase), while other fast travel options require you to pay or find magic circles that you can use to return to town quickly.

 

[baboogy]

Spent some time upgrading and updating the jam game to the point where I thought I should put it on Steam to measure player interest in a simple Mordor-style crawler.

Awesome, looks like many of the things I personally wanted are making it in, I'll be picking it up for sure when it's out. You've got pretty impressive work ethic, do you work on these games full time? Or parcel out a set amount of hours each day?

I've been pretty slow development wise the last few weeks. Haven't done anything of note, been bogged down with my other job. Wondering how people find time to juggle both.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

You've got pretty impressive work ethic, do you work on these games full time? Or parcel out a set amount of hours each day?

Full-time, sometimes a few hours a day, sometimes crunching like crazy, depending on the situation.

 

[baboogy]

You've got pretty impressive work ethic, do you work on these games full time? Or parcel out a set amount of hours each day?

Full-time, sometimes a few hours a day, sometimes crunching like crazy, depending on the situation.

Sounds like the dream for most people, being able to work on passion projects full time. I'm jealous, to be honest, keep up the good work

Though I suppose on the other hand it's probably a whole lot more stress than working for someone else, because you only get paid if you succeed, and not just paid for work in general regardless of if a project does well or busts.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

You've got pretty impressive work ethic, do you work on these games full time? Or parcel out a set amount of hours each day?

Full-time, sometimes a few hours a day, sometimes crunching like crazy, depending on the situation.

Sounds like the dream for most people, being able to work on passion projects full time. I'm jealous, to be honest, keep up the good work

Though I suppose on the other hand it's probably a whole lot more stress than working for someone else, because you only get paid if you succeed, and not just paid for work in general regardless of if a project does well or busts.

Thanks. Yes, it's way more stressful than working for a company, but also more rewarding.

I started from zero with very little money and no experience, so I had to make do with whatever I could make or commission for low prices. The first few years were stressful, as my early work didn't sell enough to make big steps forward, and I wasn't experienced enough to be as efficient as I am now. Plus, sometimes I took contract work to stay afloat and continue making my games.

Right now I'm in a position where I can try different ideas and have enough experience and libraries to make a small-scale game in a few months, measure player interest and reception, and develop a bigger game if people like it.

Which is, frankly, great.

 

[Bad Sector]

I think it also helps that you're not spending ages on every single game and are reusing assets between games (as far as i can tell).

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I think it also helps that you're not spending ages on every single game and are reusing assets between games (as far as i can tell).

Yes, along with techniques, but it depends on the project's needs -- sometimes it makes zero sense to redo things from scratch, e.g. PSG sound effects from Ringlorn Saga were reused in Demon Lord Reincarnation and Dragon Ruins, with small additions.

I was apprehensive about it at first, but later realized that most people don't give a shit, so I stopped sweating over it and focused on what was important.

And yes, if you can afford to spend several years on a single game -- bully for you, but it's still a lottery. IMO, making games you want to make while staying lean and mean is key here.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Hey guys, I'm wondering if you have any experience with stuff like this. In Unreal Engine 3 I have this level that has some farms. The farms have interactive foliage actors, which are basically decorative plants that you push around when you walk through them. Individually they are very cheap to draw. But here I have about 2000 of them on screen and my FPS drops from 60 to 40 when I'm on the farm. My rig is a 12-gen i7 with an RTX 3060.

In Unreal Engine 3, foliage is very very cheap to draw because it's all drawn as one instance. If they don't have collision, and they're low-poly like the grass, then they're almost free. Static meshes are a little more expensive. Interactive foliage actors are just a little more expensive than that. The vegetable field isn't bad. You can walk through that and push the plants around. I have levels with tons of interactive foliage like that and it renders just fine. The wheat is really costly though because of how many individual interactive actors are there.

Can you tell me some games that you think did wheat fields well? Are there any low-poly cartoony wheat fields you can show me? Were they interactive or purely decorative? I'm thinking I might have to replace all of my fun interactive wheat with regular non-interactive foliage. Do you know of any tricks to get the cost down?

Edit: Here it is in action.

A low-res gif doesn't really do it justice. It really is kind of a cute, fun effect. Maybe it's too subtle though. I'm going to see if I can make the mesh bigger, incorporating more stalks, so I can cover the same area with few meshes and thus fewer draw calls.