Amateur Game Making Night

[Merus]

Lua seems to be a favourite, and Ruby is gaining some traction, as it's basically a much improved Lisp. C++ is usually the go-to language for lower-level, efficient stuff.

 

The most important thing is that many of these languages are very similar to each other in practice, and that there's very little opportunity cost to learning one language over another - in fact it can be a benefit. Languages have their own ways of doing things, and programmers who only know one language tend to wield it like a hammer. Don't get too hung up on which language to learn - most AAA games, and many indie games, are built with a C++ backend for high efficiency and a frontend in the team's favourite high-end language. As an amateur, you probably don't need C++.

[Gaius Julius]

I'm just a beginner myself, but I would imagine that once you have learned one language it will be much easier to learn another, because you will understand the structure of a programming language. It's like once you've learned French it's much easier to then learn Spanish and Italian.

[BigJKO]

Dualhammer, is there any reason you're going for both Python and C# specifically?

 

If you're going to be using Unity you should just stick with C#, and preferably learn it through the Unity tutorials since there's a lot of stuff you don't need to bother with until you really get into some more advanced territory. If you're going for Processing then just peruse the tutorials on their site to learn the Processing Language. Keep it simple, until you've made a game.

[Dosed]

I'm planning on making something in RPG Maker even though it's not ideally what I'd actually like to make I have no creative abilities when it comes to art assets. I could probably knock up some semi-decent music, but sprites, animations etc are something I find to just do not come naturally to me. I'm also planning on learning some Ruby scripting as RPG Maker is based on it and I guess it would be handy. 

 

Ideally I'd like to make something like Final Fantasy Tactics with bits of dungeon crawling in it, but I've had a look and there's not many scripts that would facilitate either and I've not even made just a traditional RPG yet so I'm gonna give that a go and see what happens. 

[agorman]

The University I'm studying at is having a game development competition centered around safety in interactive medical devices....

A quick blurb on what they're expecting.

  Quote

The problem:

The CHI+MED project is investigating how to improve the safety of interactive medical devices, such as infusion pumps in an effort to reduce errors and thus save lives.  When disaster strikes people often look for an individual to blame, whether to the pilot of an airline that crashed or to the nurse who delivered a fatal dose of medication. A key concept that CHI+MED project aims communicate is the need to move beyond a blame culture towards more sophisticated appreciation of human error. The main goal of the competition is to produce a game that can raise awareness of blame culture and get players to reflect on how individuals are blamed even when the wider system is at fault. The final product will be hosted on the Errordiary website as part of the Discovery Zone section to provide an interactive way for people to consider the causes of human error. Further, the game should inspire curiosity about the other sections within the Discovery Zone e.g. materials within the Learning section.

 

I joined a team, some who have some small Unity experience. Hooray!

[clyde]

  On 2/7/2014 at 3:19 PM, gormanator said:

The University I'm studying at is having a game development competition centered around safety in interactive medical devices....

A quick blurb on what they're expecting.

I joined a team, some who have some small Unity experience. Hooray!

My vote is for a hand-washing simulator.

[voxn]

cool thread, hope it goes places! I started dabbling with amateur game making a couple months ago -- just messing around to see what pieces I could make with no real overarching game systems in mind.

 

 

animating sprites, which I discovered is absurdly time consuming!

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messing with particle systems:

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dialog:

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some basic animation/hitbox stuff:

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learning how to fake depth + movement:

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and some very basic shader stuff:

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mostly using tutorials from Shaun Spalding's youtube channel, which is really great resource. 

 

 

Lately though I've been trying to brainstorm a full-fledged game. Problem is I've got zero interest in making a platformer, shmup or really anything with the simple kinetic hooks that are typically recommended for babbys first game. It's extraordinarily difficult coming up with something simple in scope that could carry the sorts of systems that interest me.

[clyde]

What are you using to make this stuff voxn? I'm eventually going to have to figure out how to make dialogue boxes like that.

[voxn]

oh oops, thats all in gamemaker (though I draw in photoshop)

[BigJKO]

That looks excellent, voxn. Thanks for sharing! This thread is really growing into something I like a lot. It's cool.

[clyde]

  On 2/7/2014 at 4:45 PM, voxn said:

oh oops, thats all in gamemaker (though I draw in photoshop)

I might be asking you for advice when I get to that point.

[ihavefivehat]

Nice job on the art, Voxn! Is there a source for information on designing game art in Photoshop? I have the program, but I mainly use it for editing photos. I'd love to use it to actually draw things

[voxn]

I'm not sure game art is any different from regular art, and there are a billion art tutorials out there. If you have a specific goal in mind I could try and steer you in the right direction though

 

 

  On 2/7/2014 at 5:50 PM, clyde said:

I might be asking you for advice when I get to that point.

 

sure thing

[ihavefivehat]

Here's another game I've been working on for a while.

 

It takes a photo of your face using your computer's webcam (if it has one). Then it converts the photo into something that looks like a terrain map. After this, a 'boat' lands somewhere on the shoreline and spawns several people which start colonizing your map. Right now they will only build mines, farms, and cities depending on the properties determined by a pixel's color, but in the future I want to make their behavior a bit more complex.

 

In the video below I used Patrick Stewart's face instead of mine because it's the internet.

 

[darthbator]

I make stuff at game jams pretty frequently. Since I started my last job I have gotten pretty lazy about actually posting any of those projects to the net (and the latest 3 are all dumb little occulus rift games so their audience is hardly huge). I would love to participate in whatever limited fashion that I can (time allowing). I have a fair amount of experience in game development both professional and independently. At this point I just recommend unity to everyone. I don't really see the point in making small indie stuff in any other engine (other then maybe twine). The editor is just so well fleshed out and easy to work with and the platform is such common knowledge with so many people. I think that competency and skill inside the unity editor and with the component system is very valuable. I think you'll find most people spinning up small/indie projects will be using unity and knowledge of the "unity way" (mainly how the component system functions IMO) will allow you to just jump into projects. 

[BigJKO]

Haha, that's brilliant! Those little people can make cities, I tell ya. What are those tiny dots running along the edge of the screen? Did some of them start swimming to the end of the world? Also, it seems they can make bridges too, making it all the way to his ear somehow?

[clyde]

I've heard that Game Maker is easier for beginners than Unity. That's why I started learning it. For small 2-d experiments would you still recommend Unity for someone with very little programming experience? I haven't plunked down the $50 for studio yet, so I'm still flexible.

Oh also, can you export Unity games to an executable with the free version?

[BigJKO]

  On 2/7/2014 at 7:54 PM, clyde said:

Oh also, can you export Unity games to an executable with the free version?

 

I think so, yes. But it starts with a Unity splash screen or something.

 

Also, I think GameMaker is fine when you start out but I've heard it gets unwieldy when the projects get bigger. This might not be an issue in more recent version, I don't know..

[Twig]

  On 2/7/2014 at 7:59 PM, BigJKO said:

I think so, yes. But it starts with a Unity splash screen or something.

Yes, this is correct. I've done it so I know it's true! I find exporting to web easier for everyone, though.

[syntheticgerbil]

  On 2/7/2014 at 4:33 PM, voxn said:

cool thread, hope it goes places! I started dabbling with amateur game making a couple months ago -- just messing around to see what pieces I could make with no real overarching game systems in mind.

 

 

animating sprites, which I discovered is absurdly time consuming!

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Hey your stuff is great! I'd love to help if you ever have a lot of animation/art overflow. I did some sprite animations last year for a Dr. McNinja game, but I think it's all but canceled. It was super time consuming though.

[voxn]

fivehat, your asking for art guidance got me thinking, so here's a really basic tutorial-ish thing for people looking to jump in and experiment with their own art.

 

amateur game art tutorial (one method of a billion)

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your first foray into gamemaking will probably be very simple, so apply the same concept on your foray into art!

 

We'll say I'm a making a basic adventure game to learn about dialog trees or something. Victorian theme maybe? We'll start with a chap in a top hat, and try out a low-fi art style, as its often easier.

 

 

step 1: Grab a reference. Work from ref! Often people get hung up on this, but using ref is always a good idea.

 

random image search 'top hat man photo'

 

 

This works. We're going for a sort of standing portrait style character that can pop up on screen for some dialog.

 

 

 

step 2: trace! 

 

 

Resize and trace with the pencil tool on a new layer. Tracing is typically a bad practice, but in this case we're using it more to grab a couple general shapes, not plagiarize. Look at my lines: of much more importance is making smooth, one-take lines rather then following the picture exactly.

 

Keep it simple and cherry pick a couple of the most important shapes to outline. The simpler the end result the better. I choose the face (generally a good idea on characters) and handkerchief. Everything else is silhouette.

 

 

 

 

step 3: color

 

like with the lines + shapes, keep it as simple as you can. Using a limited color palette will give your art much more cohesion.

 

 

as you can see the colors range from light to dark, but all fall within a fairly narrow spectrum of purple/red.

 

 

 

 

step 4: detail

 

 

The face is as simple as I could make it. Two lines for eyes, a straight line+curve for the nose and a single line for the mouth. Use the ref to determine where to put the facial features if you're unsure! 

 

 

 

step 5: polish

 

 

I went though and removed the interior outlines while cleaning up the shapes. Wavy line for the hair, made his eyebrows bigger and added sideburns to give him some character. I changed the color of the handkerchief because the bright red made his hair stand out too much, and I wanted to stick to my guns with only 4 colors. I dropped all his facial features down a color except the eyes to draw emphasis to them.

 

 

final result!

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did an extremely quick + terrible background using the same method as the character. Stuck to the same range of reds/purples but kept them light (as to not draw too much attention from the guy). With a speech bubble and a little bit of animation it already starts to resemble a game!

 

 

 

 

 

[clyde]

Are these Unity classes free? Looks like it. Looking over their website, it has such a I'm-gonna-be-a-real-game-developer appeal. I'm going to download Unity and try it out before committing to Game Maker. Luckily Steam tells me how much time I've spent in Game Maker, so I know how long it'll take to give Unity a fair chance.   

 

[Twig]

I've said this before, but with no real weight behind it because it really just comes down to preference, but I find Unity to be way easier to grasp and do things in than Game Maker. I don't know if it's because I come from a background of already knowing how to program, so that's just how I think, or what. Unity 4 Lyfe.

[Dewar]

Well the archives are free, so I'd imagine the classes are as well.

[darthbator]

  On 2/7/2014 at 7:54 PM, clyde said:

I've heard that Game Maker is easier for beginners than Unity. That's why I started learning it. For small 2-d experiments would you still recommend Unity for someone with very little programming experience? I haven't plunked down the $50 for studio yet, so I'm still flexible.

Oh also, can you export Unity games to an executable with the free version?

 

I'm not experienced with game maker so I can't really comment on that. Ever since Unity added a native 2D workflow I personally would recommend just using that. Unity is seriously the "baby bear" of video game development tools. They get almost everything "just right". It's powerful enough to do really anything that you can think of and is intuitive enough to actually get it done with a minimal amount of work. I think there is an initial bar of complication to get over. Even using other game dev tools for a long time the component interface inside Unity made little functional sense to me in the first 2-3 months of using it. But their youtube channel is seriously amazing. I started in Unity 3.0 by using Will Goldstone's learning Unity book. I would recommend just about everyone go through the newest edition until you get bored and feel like you can make a thing. I think I finished about 11-13 chapters of the book before I decided to just start doing my own thing. He does an excellent job of instilling foundational knowledge in that book. Will also is now one of the heads of Unity's education program so lots of the youtube stuff is him or his team.