Game Design Challenge (PC)

Actually Crysis is the opposite of what I'm going for really, supposed to be a Sci-Fi game right? This is a mock up of what I'm aiming for, I changed the mood / materials and textures to get the point across. It was more of a, here's an update it's a city LOL!.

It's going to be very hard for me to come near the level of Crysis and the city won't be finished in this challenge, fine for a competition but for this challenge I'm doing it by myself. So if I want to finish it off to it's full extent I'll get some other peeps in to help

 

Well Crysis is sci fi, right? I get your point, but I still think it could so with some sort of desaturated, moody look, but that's probably just my preference. Looks fantastic!

 

It'll be cool when I have some destruction / decals and bits n' pieces in... Although they're not important really to the game, so I shall continue on.. Next thing to do is a basic turret system with tracking, start from the bottom work my way up..

Sure there's a lot more art to do, but I have a TEMPLATE YAY!!... Oh I really need to make a ship, y'know to actually start the game off.. Also a proper UI wouldn't go a miss either ..

 

Question
I'm making two different games essentially and neither part is going very smoothly.
How to tell if a gameplay element should be taken out?

The control scheme is going to be using a controller.
Should I just ignore the keyboard controls for now?

Nice Graphics
@ShadowK Everything looks modernly advanced like the near future. The gun model looks better than most of the ones in destiny. I hope you have awesome gameplay to match.

 

It depends, if it's an essential part of the game that's going to make or break the user experience. You need to keep at it, if you're spending time on a mechanic which is a nice to have but not necessary rip it out..

As this is mainly for PC, you'll need keyboard controls too. Although focus on getting it right first, it can be easily transferred afterwards.

P.S thanks ..

 

My advice would be to make one game and stick to a single core mechanic.

For example, above I blah blahed about novel mechanics and such for my game but first I am making a rock solid standard space shooter. I *might* try other mechanics after that but it would probably ruin the stew.

If you could give more info on what is making keyboard controls difficult it might be easier for others to help.

 

You know what day it is?

IT's MIDWAY CHALLENGE DAY!..

We are officially three months in today, where do I stand? Errr nowhere near where I expected to be, or wanted to be.. I have a lot of work to do over the next three months and potentially as always bit off more than I can chew.. We'll see .

So I've been updating this week, @RockoDyne @Billy4184 @Tsukubane @Azmar

Where are we at?

 

So you made it to my boat? Let's have a party. At this point I'm half tempted to shove aside the combat and focus on the dungeon creation and NPC interactions. I can finish them at least, but combat is going to require me to spend too much time with animations.

I haven't been able to do too much recently. I've spent more time writing something up than working on this, plus some time under the weather. It's mostly been me digging through mechanim docs than anything.

 

Rolling out my demo early next week, it is pretty much finished but has a few quirks to get rid of.

Demo has:

- Arcade space combat from 3rd person and cockpit;
- Mouse and keyboard controls;
- Guns and missiles;
- HUD with 3D radar, target cycling, target tracking, target leading, target locking, aim assist, speed, health etc;
- Enemy and friendly AI (testing has been 5 on 5 fighter combat so far);
- Mostly placeholder lowpoly art I've made for mobile in the past atm

Stay tuned!

 

Yep I'm definitely on the failure party boat so far ..

I'm going to have to leave out all the NPC speech.. I'll just put subtitles in for now, I need to get the storyline and quest system done no-matter what or it won't be much of a game. Plus combat is quite prominent so it really does need to be in there..

I even added a basic multi-player framework, which was a huge mistake. Hopefully I can get the gameplay in over the next two months and then clean up some of the artwork.. I might leave some of the levels out too. UHH!

ISSUE IS!.. I'm just not sure if it's worth releasing even in a demo format. You can't really judge a games merit when half of it's missing!. LOL! Whatever I do now is going to be rushed, that's for sure.

 

Five months, enough time for a dream to become a nightmare.

 

Technically it's fine, it's just the amount of work.. Wouldn't say it's a nightmare, could just do with another six months on top of the extra three ..

Even the hack and slash I did took 4 months (for 2 levels) so in scope this is around 30X the size and many times the difficulty. So in the end I think six months was over enthusiastic...

I'll have the prototype done by the end, it just probably won't be very good without a lot of polish .. Being able to create a very small AAA type of game in 12 months is a feat, doing it in six months is madness. LOL!

@Billy4184

Really looking forward to it ..

 

Thanks!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought this thread was really about making anywhere between an 1-mission demo and a full PC game at somewhere approaching AAA quality. I thought it was really about testing the quality of the material that people can produce rather than the creation of an entire AAA game. I thought it was about pushing Unity's graphics and mechanics, finding ways to cut the time to make high quality desktop art, finding ways to make development of high quality PC games for small-team or solo indies easier (or generally possible), and coming up at the end with a sort of demonstration of the current limits of your capabilities.

Because that's what you can't find in any other thread. There are either WIP threads for a particular game, or small works art threads, or threads like Feedback Friday which are certainly much more useful for most devs who are trying to get into game dev and the game market with projects of reasonable scope, but don't cater so well to people who want to just find where their limits are.

I expected a high failure rate here (including my own) but at the very least I wanted to hone and test my workflow, pace and ability and come out with something much better than I could do last time, all the while having the feedback and company of people in the same situation.

Because five months is simply not enough to make an entire game even approaching AAA quality. My suggestion is this thread is steered toward making small, playable demos of games that belong on a decent desktop PC, something to show people that indie game development doesn't have to be about trying to find the next viral tap game on mobile.

Because I think a lot of the market for simple mobile games relies on hardware constraints that could well be removed in the next generation or two. For example, simple games with simple graphics are greatly helped by the fact that most people who play them are sitting in a bus staring at a tiny screen with sunlight reflecting off it through the window and a lot of visual stimulation around them that is distracting. But with mobile VR, which Oculus is hard at work on, then at least visually you can be fully occupied with gaming anywhere, meaning that high quality 3D graphics are in again.

We need this thread as a place to prepare for the demise of the saturated one-finger mobile market (which may or may not happen but probably will) and to show that it is possible for indies to make competitive games at desktop quality. There are so many threads about simple games that it is no wonder that people think that is all Unity can be good for.

At the very least, at the end you will have enough of a game that you can probably convince all the people that you will need in your team to join it and finish the game with you.

 

Nobody in a one man band or small team can make a full AAA game in 6 months or even 3 years.. You would be correct in all instances, originally for me it was about getting a new concept together. Were currently working on another title and I wanted to finish the prototype for my original idea..

I've already made mid sized games before within 6 months, so this was a test to push me to the limit and see if I could bring something of a certain quality out of the concept. So my goals may vary slightly to others, but in essence it's about having the time to publish something more than the average mobile game for PC / Console.

I'd love to talk more about workflows and sharing idea's on speeding things up, but besides from @Asvarduil who reached out for assistance on some procedural work. Nothing has really popped up for discussion .

The issue is with everything else cropping up, I've probably only spent 1.5 Months on the actual game.. Which is probably the biggest takeaway for me, external factors.

 

Yeah I think I'm in a better position than most, being able to devote most of my time to it.

Anyway, if this thread is about seeing how far you can get in five months, I think it would be better if it was stated clearly. I think the stuff about getting on steam at the end made a lot of people think it was about completing the game entirely and give up when they started running out of time. Although you might be able to do a good shot at that there probably aren't many who could or believe that they could. So to attract more people I suggest removing the pressure by making it clear that it is like some sort of game jam and not about a commercially successful, full game.

It would be fantastic to see here a lot of small projects, like 5-10 minute demos of gameplay and graphics that show the best of your ability, and in some cases push the boundaries of what we expect to see around these forums. You obviously are pretty good at getting the most out of Unity's graphics engine and I for one would like to see a snapshot of a game that you could make with that.

 

Well it's not like I won't look through the process of steam as well if we want to? But for me it'll be too early to release anything so.. It would be nice to get to a "marketing" part, but I'd have to extend the challenge then some.!

I might split this into two parts, GameDev challenge one.. Making the concept happen and Game PC Challenge 2, the polish and promo..

P.S I'm not bothered if anyone actually uses Unity ..

 

It would definitely be very, very helpful to have the second part so, here's another suggestion: make that second part 2-3 months at least. I think maybe something that's missing right now is allowing for a decent period of polish, it would make people feel like they have more time to block things out rather than perhaps trying to design and polish at the same time.

Something that increased my programming speed this last week or two is not trying to design the ship system yet but just patching new ship features into the current code as soon as I add them to the design. As long as I stick to some basic rules (well commented scripts and separate scripts if the code is more than 100 lines or so), it doesn't mess things up too much, although there'll be plenty of cleanup to do soon. But it allows me to add, test and discard things very fast.

If I knew that I had a decent amount of dedicated time just to polish the project then I can avoid 'premature optimization' which is a bad habit I seem to have picked up in the past. If that was the case, I feel I could take a good shot at finishing the first prototype of a whole decent game in the 3 months we have left.

Another thing that I think would help (for the next challenge) is to have a couple of weeks where everyone does a decent design document and discusses their design, followed by at least a month of building the 'minimum viable product' with cubes and capsules. I think perhaps there was a general problem with planning and pacing and too much chopping and changing by people here including me. Now I've distilled it down to pure space combat and my life is much easier, and I'm focusing on the programming a lot more (better late than never!). Nothing wrong with throwing up a few nice art pieces at the start but I think the focus should be on gameplay first as a general rule in game dev.

Anyway, that about sums up my thoughts, and I hope a lot more people chime in to give feedback on this thread so we can find out a way to make it work.

​

 

Sounds good to me, I might just split this into a continuum though.. New people can join and others can continue from where they are at.. Because at that point the more experienced developers can help out the newer folk because they've already been through it.

But at least try for the sky in the remaining three months, without thinking well I'll have another six months after this anyway so meh.! One of the biggest reasons for this challenge was motivation, if the pressure is on you'll move dat bootay!..

 

So...you wanted feedback?

Right here, we hit the very first opportunity for confusion: Look at where this contest is taking place. While @ShadowK specifically mentions graphics quality and implementation details in the OP for this contest...two things that the Game Design forum is not directly intended to tackle. I personally feel that, while this may be the place the contest is, it's not necessarily the best place for it - I come to the Game Design forum to hone my Game Design skills, and take those to the next level. This contest did that, so good on it.

Hold it, buster.

First, simple games with simple graphics are not a mobile-only thing. Have you fired up Steam lately? I ask that seriously. You have a rather traditional idea of what "should" be considered mainstream gaming. Indeed, this statement here is very much approaching a "No True Scotsman" fallacy, aimed towards graphical fidelity and simple mechanics.

Personally, I made my breakthroughs in this contest when I simplified my design from a mechanical perspective. Things began coming together when I focused around making a space shooter, instead of a single-player MMO (AKA: Dragon Age Inquisition.) Few moving parts is a good thing, provided they're A) the right moving parts, B) moving parts consistent with the rest of your work, and C) good moving parts. This has been Nintendo's secret to success for decades now.

However, I'm glad you bring up visual fidelity. It ties well into my last point about confusion over what this contest is about (I'm actually not sure, and in hindsight, I don't even think @ShadowK fully is - that's not a knock at all, seriously, this whole setup had some rather conflicting objectives that made "playing" this "game" frustrating. Yes, I'm calling this contest a game henceforth, because when you make a contest, it's a game where the primary mechanic is making games.)

Also, you say, "A decent desktop PC." What is that? I'm serious. One of the challenges of PC development, is the overwhelming number of configurations out there. There are people will face-meltingly powerful machines. There are people with a crappy netbook from 2009 out there.

As designers, we do decide who will play our game, and who will not. I'm not aiming this question at you - in part, I think I know your answer, which I already disagree with ("The OMG-FACE-MELTXORING PCs!!!1!") - but, seriously, who should we aim our games at? I prefer to aim at people with older PCs, because having had money problems in the past, I know not all gamers can upgrade hardware every other year. Some wait five years, others ten. I want them to have a good time too.

While I agree that the mobile market is going to crater sooner or later due to oversaturation and a mass exodus of developers as soon as the next money-pot is found, I think you've got a very poor outlook on games. The simpler games are the ones that are still widely-played and talked about. Do you hear anyone talking about Lightning Returns? How about Dragon Age 2? I respect your concerns, but I have the opposite opinion - I think making simpler, but engaging desktop-quality games is important. Luckily, phones are getting better performance, so ironically, by saving desktop games we could potentially "save" phone games from their eventual demise. That'd be as ironic as hell though.

Yes, I agree that presentation counts, that's one thing that got me all insecure in this contest. As someone who specializes in programming, and is young in my professional life even still, it's something I just can't dedicate time to. I have to find workarounds, simplifications. If you want to train people on 3D art pipelines, maybe what we need is an art challenge, not a game design challenge.

That being said, I'd like to propose something else. From what I see, the reason AAA gaming is in decline, is because it costs more to make said quality of game, than you make from it. It's basic numbers, not at all unlike Dragon Warrior I.

What we really should do if we want to prepare for the iPocalypse, is figure out how to make good quality, genuinely enjoyable games as inexpensively as possible. Instead of throwing more realism, more gold, more ornamentation, more particle systems at games, how about we make visual styles that are simple and cheap to produce, yet synergize well with the rest of our works? The Law of Conservation of Detail exists for a reason, you know. It's why T.V. shows are still being made in the era of NetFlix.

So, I'm done vehemently disagreeing with you, but I'd like to take this last sentence as more proof that the metagame that @ShadowK has created is unclear. Is it an art contest? Is it a game design contest? Is it a practical interview? Is it a chance to get some venture capital? Is it an elevator pitch to get on Steam with? This game that ShadowK has made pulls you in so many different directions, with so many different stated goals, it's very difficult to play this game at all. And, since ShadowK created this contest, that's his fault, the weakness in his game's design.

ShadowK, your turn for vehement disagreement from me.

Next time, create a game with clear goals. I think what you did with this contest is everything that's actually wrong with the AAA industry: you've got a bad case of having too many money-prioritized goals. The AAA segment of the game industry wants to create great games, and puts untold millions of dollars to that very end. That being said, the amount of money required to perform basic R&D on a game is beginning to outstrip what a game can reasonably make, even given the ever-increasing price tag associated with video games. You're pulled between publishers, distributors, the fans, your own ideas/biases, what your boss wants, what the executives want, what the lawyers want, what my pet cat's most recent bowel movement wants. That concludes my vehement disagreement with @ShadowK.

For a game design contest, we should create a design and prove it - or, disprove it - by prototyping, as I did. I recommend leaving money and Steam out of it completely. I recommend leaving insinuations of those things out of it. I recommend focusing on creating - for a game design contest - only on a prototype, period. It should take two months, tops, using colored primitives. Forget visual fidelity. Forget "making it a 'true' game" (whatever in Thrall's hairy green balls that means, an iPhone junkie can interpret that as meaning, "Make it a stereotypical iPhone game.")

I found that my prototype "worked", but that it wasn't what I wanted to build. I found technical limitations in Unity that also prevented me from applying other knowledge to making what I wanted to make. I found that I needed to improve my processes, and how to do just that. I know more than I did coming into this contest. I know of things that I lack, and after a couple of weeks, I feel better about getting back to what I was doing before.

Finally, this thing about "the point was to make something...anything!" My diplomatic, measured, and professional response to that is thus:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAHAHAHAHAAAHheeheeAHAHAHAAHAHHHAAA!

I'm sorry, I don't make games for the joy of filling my hard drive with skeletons; that happens naturally, believe-you-me (seriously, I've got an external hard drive with skeletons of dead games to prove it.) Every single one of those games has contributed some tech improvement that led to me shipping something else, though. If you're going to do something, have something to show for it. Doing this for any other reason, is useless. It doesn't help people finish things. As a rule, you can have the best design in the world, but it means nothing if you don't ship.

Having a prototype is a reasonable objective, because it's part of doing that. Most importantly, it is clear. It is judgeable. It is deliverable. And if I'm not happy with my deliverable, I can and should be honest enough to say, "you know what? I thought this was a good idea, but it's not." That happened to me, I found my subsequent ideas were sub-par. I went public, I was convinced to give it another shot, those ideas were worse, though they led to refinements. I'm starting to think, in light of that, maybe I didn't come in last, maybe I've actually come in first. If so, I find that idea even scarier, and something I need to do something about - starting with giving this feedback.

...

Look, I'm sorry if I sound antagonistic to all of this. I have found some perspective in the last couple of weeks, and when I found it, I realized more was wrong with it all than just me. My having some things wrong (trying to make an "improvement" of a fundamentally-broken premise, using an approach I'm ill-suited to) doesn't diminish the other things that are going on wrong - a contest with unclear or useless objectives, based on incomplete ideas of what constitutes "true gaming" that I generally don't agree with.

I became an indie because I opposed the march towards photorealism. I wanted to give gamers a way to train their minds, while escaping from the harsh, cold winds of reality, at least for a little while. Perhaps more importantly than any prototype, or any process realizations, all of this led to me rediscovering that. I get that some people want to recreate the glory days of the AAA Empire, and I can respect that - those were good days. That said, the genie is out of the bottle. I propose, instead of going all Donald Trump on the games landscape, we re-introduce AAA ideas from the past to modern desktop and mobile gaming.

 

OK, let me clarify a little bit.

When I talk about 'decent desktop PC' you can probably take a guess that I mean something like new technology from 5-7 years ago? You're right that the term is vague, but basically what I am trying to say is that I think the contest should be geared toward a game that is way above current general mobile capabilities, one that, at the very least, needs an HD 4000 card or something. A game with (idk) 500,000 + polygons on screen, running a host of image effects and plenty of lights (Since so far I have only focused on mobile, I'm guessing a few of these values). And I don't mean tetris cubes with 3 levels of subdivision, a million lights and 10 bloom filters, I mean the kind of game that strives toward a bit of realism and graphical depth. So let's say, maybe a game that could compete graphically with the games of ~2007? Crysis 1?

Now about simple vs complicated games, let me be very clear: I'm talking about general trends, and I'm certainly not saying that simple games can't be successful. But if you're not making something novel, and you are going for a non-abstract game with some level of simulation of reality, I'm talking to you. Generally speaking, the market for low-end graphics will (IMO) be reduced to a small fraction once somebody comes up with decent hardware and interface for mobile gaming, like mobile VR. Yes some people will still play simple games but generally speaking you will have to do a much, much better job of standing out.

And another note, I'm not talking about incredibly complicated gameplay. Gameplay has always benefited from simplicity. What do you think COD has under the hood in its shooting mechanics? probably less than you would find in ultimate FPS. What I'm talking about is depth of graphics, depth of simulation (e.g. animation fidelity, variety of things going on around the player to make it more realistic). A game that, even though you just see a snapshot, you feel like you're immersed in a complicated, realistic game universe.

Go and have a look at Google play. You will find quite a few clones of the Air Strike starter kit ( a pretty simple kit without even any aerodynamics at all as far as I can see) - most of them even have Unity's free fighter jet for crying out loud - and they mostly have hundreds of thousands of downloads, while above-average top-down shmups with 40 levels are fallingbehind. It shows that people want realistic simulations on mobile and that means high-quality graphics. They probably don't even think about how hard it would be to look at and control the plane with a touch screen, they see it and download/buy it. So the only problem is the fundamental lack of decent mobile gaming interface which makes it hard to get the player immersed. But that might change soon.

And by the way, I'm not saying that most people shouldn't aim for simpler games until they're well experienced in game dev. But this thread would help balance things out for more experienced people or those who simply want to aim high.

 

I don't really find this fair or an opinion that comes from an experienced developer . Finding your limits is an essential part of the design process, you really don't have a clue as to what you can achieve unless you've actually tried to achieve it. Hell dunning-Krueger, you don't know what you don't know.!!

Game design in small teams and one man bands will stem from an execution of both ideas and technical ability to create a guideline, pretty much enabling you not to trip over yourself and causing said game in question to flop before it gets out of the gate.

Experience would of made this challenge pretty straight forward.

I'll agree with BF4 being slammed on a mobile device from Dice, it shows the capability of mobile devices. But from a design perspective it's more work, not less..

Actually DAO was a victim of simplified design, the point and click mechanics system really took what was the core essence of the first game and made it monotonous.

Of course, set a target market but Crysis didn't do bad @ aiming for the top.. It's years on and it's still used in benchmarks. Oh I fully well understand Asvarduil, the question is do you? I explain later in more detail.!

Irrelevant to this challenge, fact of the matter is. Mobile is saturated, AAA requires too much for small teams or single indies... It's about finding a middle ground.

The concept was clear in the beginning, discuss workflows, ways of speeding up game development with practical design. The issue is, the pre-cursor means you had the expensive tools.. It meant you have a LOT of time to spare and it also means you need experience to the point where the basics / intermediate concepts wouldn't need explaining.

So yeah that is my fault, I set the bar too high. It's relaxed and become muddled for it... I will still continue on with the original plan but it's unfair for me to expect others to do so.

It's like a DT tutorial, that says in this tutorial you'll need X.X, I'd of have to take it one step further which I'll conclude at the end.

Hey hang on, I'm not going to hold people's hands and walk them through design production in liccle steps. Again I'll explain fully at the end.!

What did you want me to do Asvaduil? This is my job, full time and the end results will be everything you've said. So I said hell, why don't we do it together and go for a ride maybe we can break some bread and share along the way? Well it sounded good in principle..

If the defining factors were, you need at LEAST 5 years of experience dealing with advanced mechanics and rendering systems etc. Oh by the way you might need at least 5K to cover all the tools and extra's needed to speed up to the process to at least make this a practical reality? It's not really in the community spirit is it now? I might has well of not bothered.

It would of been absolutely pointless to have people doing exactly what I'm doing, Y'know what I'm doing now? I'm ripping apart the SLN for Unreal engine and fixing bugs in the engine for cooking packages. That's been my 10 hour duty I've just finished. It's not for the faint of heart or the in-experienced..

So let them have fun, try and make something a little bit challenging. I'll help as much as I can, I remember trying to help you Asvarduil! Remember? So what comes out of it in the end? Pretty much slander to everyone involved.

Yeah, thanks a lot.!

 

The mobile market will be the future, one click of a button to auto play is the future. The kid's these days that play these games were not 80s or early 90s kids. Games back then were extremely hard and required skill, and the kids these days refuse to play these old hard games and prefer easy games. It's sad but these easy and simple games are the future, heck if anything the games you guys are trying to make may be the dying field. But for sure, everyone just waiting for the next big money maker to jump on *cough VR cough*.

Phones are getting better and better, and that's what everyone uses religiously...

 

@ShadowK
I'm not slandering you. I was offering constructive critique, and you did help. You're the one blowing things out of proportion.

You asked what I wanted to see? Here it is:

"The purpose of this game is to create a prototype for a sci-fi game of some kind within four months, that you can turn into a game. The prototype must be shown in a playable state, and get a passing vote by your peers. This is a game design contest, so don't focus on visuals or sound, only playability counts - though, polish is a great bonus."

That has a clear goal - create a playable prototype that the community will judge. The contest is a game design contest, so that's what's being judged. The contest has a time limit - four months. If you polish your prototype, that's well and good, but not strictly necessary, per se.

I had critiques for you that I stand by, but I didn't say them to be a jerk. You're busy doing things that require time and talent, and I respect that. You're trying to help younger developers - like myself - on their journey, which is awesome. I'm trying to help you, the same way that you helped me - by seeing shortfalls in this very contest, this time, from my perspective. You helped me see things wrong in my last completed project, and I didn't get mad at you for that.

There's a reason nearly everyone dropped out of the contest - the game design of the contest was bad. That is your fault, the same way that me failing to design The Hero's Journey as a half-decent game was mine. We've both made the same mistake. The ball is back in your court, though - are you going to continue crying, "Foul! Slander! Abuse!" at my detailing how this went wrong, and how it's diagnostic of problems we see elsewhere, or are you going to go back, re-read my statements in the tone they were written in (giving feedback, albeit feedback you probably don't want to hear?) You're a professional, you're good at what you do, and you're invested - I leave that decision to you...

...After you rest. I've had all-nighters of my own, so I sympathize with being tired and as a result emotional. Nothing you've said is what I would expect out of a skilled professional. I may disagree with some of your ideas, but that's not contempt of you. Please don't confuse the two, especially when I want to give back the boon you've now twice given me.

EDIT: One thing occurs to me - this is now the second time you've taken something I've said in a completely different way in which I've intended it. First time was the first time I realized this contest wasn't working for me, where you interpreted me as out-and-out ragequitting. Now there's this where I think that you're saying you think I'm calling you a generally terrible person...or something. It's not clear. I urge you to first, rest up, and second...actually read what I write. The only bad thing I have to say about you the person is you're not showing me any respect, or at least not enough read what I write.

 

Are you going to read my replies? In most cases you are in-correct, abstract or irrelevant. If you didn't "get it" at the beginning correctly, you should of asked.

I also admitted already it's kind of fallen by the wayside.. I'll quote myself again!

"The concept was clear in the beginning, discuss workflows, ways of speeding up game development with practical design. The issue is, the pre-cursor means you had the expensive tools.. It meant you have a LOT of time to spare and it also means you need experience to the point where the basics / intermediate concepts wouldn't need explaining.

So yeah that is my fault, I set the bar too high. It's relaxed and become muddled for it... I will still continue on with the original plan but it's unfair for me to expect others to do so."

Phraseology like this aren't constructive, I'm sorry Asvarduil but there's no reading between the lines here:

If it would of been phrased correctly, I'd of improved it by doing X instead of it appearing like a rant (your intention or not).. Then we'd of discussed / disagreed or agreed.

I still stick by everything I said.!

 

@Azmar Oculus are hard at work on this and have wizards like John Carmack on it. I don't know if it will eventuate, but you can be sure that if it does, the market will change greatly, since player immersion is one of the driving factors of high end graphics. While people stare at a tiny screen, there's no point investing in visual fidelity, but if you wrap your game around their eyes and shut everything else out then pixel art will take a back seat. From what I've seen of the mobile market, there is a high demand for high-end mobile games even with the current massive shortcomings of mobile devices.

Anyway that is all I'm going to say on the topic as it isn't very relevant.

I think people should focus on helping @ShadowK make this thread useful to us and forget about the frustration of what has happened so far. I think this about sums up where we are:

(Edit: LOL I noticed you just quoted yourself there, but here it is again)

So let's focus on fixing it and iterating this challenge until it becomes something helpful to us.

I'm going to continue and I hope I succeed in doing exactly what this thread was designed for, a playable game in 3 months time (I think I should point out that I misunderstood perhaps in thinking that graphics were a big part of the challenge, it seems like they weren't). I will be going for the best I can make though.

I say again, props to @ShadowK for starting this contest, I've already got a lot out of it, it has motivated me and pushed me to work harder and more efficiently and hopefully will continue to do so.

 

Suggest away , I don't take any or this personally.. I was chuckling away at Star Trek whilst replying to Asvarduil Whilst trying to get the damn Functions working correctly for flow anims..

At this turn in point, we have three directions.. I either dictate a specific list of criterion to match, we extend the date and go whole hog or we continue on muddling through..

 

Well the criteria do need to be fixed, it's a bit vague, e.g., in the first post you say "Design a small advanced 3D grade A worthy game in 6 months (Or a prototype)" ... Design, build or both? If steam is the end goal, what exactly do they require in terms of polish and content to greenlight a game? A buggy alpha demo or a clean, playable beta build? That's what should be laid out in detail and using Steam criteria, which has probably gone through a few revamps, is a great way of guiding development.

Secondly I think that it would be good to set milestones. I know everyone will say things like "I work best under pressure so I'll leave it to the last min" but as an experienced developer you could lay down some deadlines for different stages in such a way as to help people learn, and if people don't want to adhere to it then too bad. From what I've seen there is a massive lack of planning throughout the participants here so we could all benefit from this.

And don't allow weekly posts to become "I did a lot of practice for my game development by playing WOW and paying attention to how it all happened" but push people to post content and continually update their demos which should be out pretty early. @GarBenjamin and others were ready to get their hands on it and give feedback a long time ago.

So what do we do now? I think tack another month on for polish and publishing and let's see what happens (probably extend that to 2-3 months for the next contest). We can fast track it a bit but it would be good to have something good to show to encourage more to join. At the moment there are probably a lot of people watching this and wondering where it will end up, so I say let's clean things up, get back on the horse and keep going

ps I think it would be good to encourage people to join even now, and just do what they can, it will be good practice and they can just pick things up in the next round.

 

First off I would like to say, I respect this challenge, I respect the person that created the challenge, I respect the challenge rules and everything. Heck I was super excited, because I never written a single line of code in Unity before this challenge and you guys were accepting high hitters, and I was able to compete against some of the old farts on these forums I wanted to show people that new people don't need to spend months on making pong before they can start a crazy project.

@ShadowK I do think billy4184 has some good advice to offer, and I can see where he is coming from. As a new person I don't have much to offer here except my skills in programming, when I started and read about this competition I thought it was a bunch of programmers ranging from 1 year experience to insane amount of experience showing off their crazy programming skills. Making anything from the next Final Fantasy, Zelda, etc out of cubes. I was excited when I saw some guy wanting to do a procedural dungeon generator with zelda mix, another guy was doing some cool water / boat effect in unity, and some guy has a really cool abomination thing that could create its own limbs and was all done out of cubes. This is what I thought this challenge was about, the art of programming and spend the last few months making it presentable with some assets and the foundation of a real AAA title.

After a month or two of hard work on my own project, I came back excited to post my results and before I did that I saw shadowK posted his stuff. I saw lots of crazy fancy graphics, and unity shaders, with no hint of programming...while I was sitting there focusing on game logic and making it the best foundation ever for a future game. After that I realized I was in the wrong competition I no longer took it seriously as I thought it turned into just who can create the best shader competition or who has the best graphics. I think this is the same for a lot of people. ShadowK I seriously listen to your advice and always hope you answer my questions on random posts, so don't take this as an assault towards you this is not my intentions. I did try to offer my advice a few months ago that the competition should be put into some type of tier system to not discourage people.

BTW I am still in the competition, I just decided to extend the project as I feel like I am onto something good here!

 

@Azmar I don't see why you shouldn't fit right in, although games unfortunately are a bunch of things besides programming, and these other things usually take the most time. As a reasonably good programmer who has done some things like simple aerodynamics and terrain generation in Unity I know that it can be fun as hell but I think that the reality of game development is that you have to do most work on art and graphics, even if your game is abstract. Again, I misunderstood about graphics being a huge part of this contest although I think if you're a solo dev and you can't do art you are going to have a hard time being commercially successful, and especially on desktop a lot of people want high definition 3D immersion. So I think this contest should balance those out and it seems to have that idea, although I do agree that everyone here should have posted demos pretty early on, and mine is what I'm working on now.

Anyway, I'm keen to see what you've got!

 

@Azmar

As Billy says, unfortunately a lot of it is artwork.. I'm just getting that portion out of the way (well a blockout) because that's all it really is.. The mood and lighting etc. only took me about 10 hours and shaders only took a week, which in the total sum of one and a half months isn't much.. Most of it has been making meshes and trialling systems, the coding part is coming for sure. I already have a fair few basic elements and AI system coded (Also in the works is the inventory, system settings, level up system) which is surprisingly hard in an FPS!, but I've also ported the project to Unreal and being hit by problems I've had to fix deep within it.

But again, the UI isn't worth coding without a graphical UI.. A combat system is pointless without basic projectiles / collision / a character skeleton + meshes, cutscenes are pointless without animations and so is the collision for melee without the meshes to collide. So whilst it doesn't need to be top tier for now, it's all relative.. It's a 50/50 split for every piece of code you do you're going to need some art. Just the way of it

Also I like to get it out the way, I know what I'm aiming for so I have to do it at some point right?

Just to note, if you want to do the coding first go for it! We can help you get through the art.!

P.S it's easier to show art than gameplay vids .

@Billy4184

I'll have a think about it, might be worth throwing a doc together and then getting GIGI to close this one down after we've review it.. I might "reset" the challenge and make it more practical.

I think a demo is what needs to be thrown out at the end, something that can be marketed but not released. We can give feedback with a closed group.

So some things to discuss right now:

Length: Six months.!
Target: 1-3 levels, must include inventory, UI, Artwork, Combat, Start Screen, reward system (levelling etc.), VFX and a story!. POLISHED!
We have a pre-req for two weeks!. You must choose your favourite game in the same vein, make notes about how it works, what it has in it and we'll discuss how to achieve it.
Week 1 is a design document, exactly how you want to approach the concept.
I'll fill in the rest later.
One "Special" mechanic! Up to you..
Game type: 3D RPG / FPS / RTS (Either in the style of Sci-Fi or Medieval). It could be a Shmup (like the alien overlords stole my bread) for example.

There is one thing though, we need a breakdown of what you're doing every week to actually discuss it. One of the points Asvarduil brought up was very true and I was bad at it too. Discussing how you're going to actually approach, or what you're doing with various systems.

Because if we don't discuss the actual development, then were pretty much just showing screenshots .. I started off well with the breakdown of world machine then it err, just went off the rails with all the art.

 

Hey...so, I've cooled down and chilled out.

Public apology to @ShadowK - I was more than a bit of a douche in how I worded my feedback, you didn't deserve that. I need to be careful about projecting onto people. I'm sorry about that, I'll avoid doing that in the future. I shouldn't expect respect, when in reality I'm not giving it myself. You were right to call me out.

I'm glad my critiques bore some helpful fruit, though. Here's hoping the next contest goes well! I'll only enter if I have time to do so; unfortunately I am time-poor right now, which isn't the most helpful thing ever. Should you ever be in Austin, I owe your beers. Good ones.

 

@Azmar and for anyone else that wants to learn how to do art, as someone who is more of a programmer than an artist but managed to learn a lot in a short time, here are some thoughts:

I recommend installing Blender (free) and subscribing to CGCookie (not free), they really do have a lot of high quality videos on there, anything from basic geometry to rigging to character sculpting. That's been my place to go for learning how to do stuff. There are so many shortcuts and tools in the Blender aresenal that you'll never learn it just by opening the program and pressing buttons. It is a powerful beast and not that hard to use, but it can look intimidating at first. Endless daily practice is key.

For those who are 'engineering minded' (if there is such a thing), modelling probably won't be too hard since modelling, especially hard surface but also character modelling, is really a question of engineering, even character artists use rules for proportion and don't just use 'artistic intuition' for everything, although experience makes it appear that way.

But that is where texturing comes in. This is what was always hard for me to get right. Apart from proportion, it is probably the biggest deal-breaker in art and goes a long way toward setting the mood of the game. A little too much contrast can make a model an eye-sore and a bit too little makes it bland and boring. Keeping a consistent style and the right amount and saturation of colors can be very very difficult. Tweaking specular maps in Gimp or Photoshop and reloading them in Blender and then peering at the reflections is annoying as hell. That is why most artists start early and build an enormous library of textures that they can have on hand. But there is precious little to find on the internet in terms of clean, tileable diffuse and specular textures. CGtextures is a good place to start, but most of them have uneven light reflections and take a lot of work to make them useable.

So what to do? Well if you want to learn how to texture then I'm sure there are places to learn, but I took the easy way out and got Substance Designer/Painter (not free but pay-to-own). Before I used it my models looked like crap, it is as simple as that. They have an insane amount of fantastic materials ready to go. The day that I got it I spent hours painting my spaceships with rubber, gold, rock, dirt, and human skin with a gleeful smile on my face

Since my game is about spaceships, I have a workflow set up (lowpoly stuff atm) where I have materials prepared for:

- Base metal (painted)
- Highlights (painted panels etc)
- Dark areas (exhaust etc)
- Windows

as well as metal edge wear and grunge filters, all ready to go like a conveyor belt. That means I can keep a consistent style very easily.

So this is what happens: I import my low res and high res models, bake a normal map from the high res model, go to Gimp and paint a material map (where each material is applied on the model), and export the material map back to Designer. BAM all the materials are applied and edge wear and grunge applied instantly and in about fifteen minutes I have done what used to take me hours of frustration. Next hour or so I spend adding seams and panel lines and tweaking things.

In case you haven't seen it, this is an example of what I can texture in a few hours, and I know for a fact I'm slow as a snail at texturing. It only has about 400 polys but the textures make it look a lot more interesting:



So anyway, as I said I'm no expert but if you want the quickest way to a decent looking model I can probably give you a few pointers, so feel free to ask me anything you want

 

Ok thanks I will pin that advice to when I get to Blender I actually paid for the Udemy Blender course in Kickstarter (I used their Unity course and it was pretty good) I just haven't gotten around to starting it up yet. Yes I am very scared of the graphical part of the game dev, but I will learn it eventually!

 

My advice is to start now and practice every day, Blender is full of useful features but it takes a while to know when and how to use them. It'll make your life a lot easier later on

 

Ok so what would you like me to do guys? Shall I close this one down, release a new design doc and reset it..

Or are treating this as a failed experiment?

 

@ShadowK
Maybe you should. Things have been going to well for me but I've also been slacking quite a bit. I think others could use it.

I want to apologize to everyone. I haven't been very supportive or contributing a lot. Yet I've been asking for help and bragging about my own success.

I have a few tips for beginners too.

1. Simplify. Any game can be simplified. Shooters are just first-person point and click. RPGs are just simple math with graphics and a story.
2. Pen and paper prototype. Board games are games too and they have solid rules. If you make the rules first you should be about to make a quick demo using just scraps of paper.
3. GDD When you start one you should know you are going to be changing it a lot. Don't stop until the game is done. Metal gear solid 1 was about action but then it turned into a stealth game, imagine what that looked like.
4. Art is everywhere. The price of free is that you have to look extra hard to find something you can use. I have a whole cast of place holders and more animations than I can use that I found in a day. You don't have to make all of the game yourself it's not cheating. Models, animations, sky boxes, all can be found online for free you can even find them in unity and unreal engine.
5. Textures. Like before you can find them online but you can also take pictures to get textures. If you don't know how to paint there are other ways to get textures.
6. Autodesk Maya is a 3D modeling program that has a free student version. A version you can learn with but can't market without a license, like unity. It's way more powerful than blender with lot of support and cool tools. There's also autodesk mudbox which is a sculpting program which can work with Maya.

 

@ShadowK yeah maybe it should be restarted now. I'm committed to helping the next round go a lot better and I think if we continue we risk losing people who would otherwise join.

I suggest that we really get people to cough up content for the next one as many of the replies (including mine) sound like a lot of wishful thinking and not enough work.

I think NUMBER ONE is for everyone to knock up ANY sort of demo in the first fortnight or so, no matter how bad it is. It would really help with commitment, start feedback rolling and bring up the momentum. If we can't get that sort of commitment then the whole thing is pretty well doomed. This thread isn't, as you've said, for anybody, it is for people who are ready to become factories of art and code. So the demo can be a good way of finding out early if someone is in the circumstances to get it all done.

Looking forward to doing things right this time!

 

When is the new thread going to be posted? I've been wanting to talk about game design since I first got here. I'm only 3 and a half weeks in. I have a GDD and a playable demo which I'll link if I knew where to post it.
Edit:

This is a screenshot of the barebones prototype with place holders. The boxes are NPCs.

 

I've asked GIGI to lock this one up, give me two or three days to draft out an actual decent plan and then we'll get going.

 

Locked at user request.
Gigi