/agdg/ - Amateur Game Development General

>>29066

>discussion about tools that can be used to make games are not gamedev

Holy shit youre retarded

>>29059

SQLite is usually used for an offline database

Woah, do not allow your database to be connected to in any way freely. That's begging to get fucking ruined. Create a server that communicates in some well-defined API (Protocol Buffers, Cap'n Proto, and homemade JSON are good choices), and use your database from that. There are way too many things a raw database connection can do to trust that. You should only expose the absolutely most limited functionality necessary.

That, and raw database queries are brittle. You can make changes to your database while still maintaining a stable frontend API if you use a server to broker your data. If you allow raw database connection, your API will be impossible to keep stable. This also moves all the server logic from the server side into your client side, which you don't want.

If your concern is "TCP messaging for various front ends", then bypass that shit entirely and use a proper message serialization library like protobuf.

Again, if you can access your database directly from the internet, you're doing it very fucking wrong.

>>29066

Okay, so on a distributed RPG on a website that lets you play, how is MySQL not part of game dev? Or for that matter, lets say learning Canvas for the game UI?

Please kys.

Systems engineering is absolutely salient if your making a game that isn't a stupid simple 2d platformer for one player.

Totally depends on what type of game you're making, what language you're using, and everything else. Your Op is utterly useless to garner any help.

Are you making a MMO type thing? Is it being handled by a dynamic back end like PHP/Python(Flask)/Node(Express)? How often does your volatile data change? You might want to use Memcached for your data. Is your client using something like Canvas/JS for the UI? Are you using Ajax for something like Websockets for multiplayer interactions?

etc.

>Have 33x33 mesh, generate 2D vector values randomly on each point

>Interpolate between 4 corners to generate values

But apparently this isn't Perlin Noise unless you take surface normals?

>>31741

Specifically for it to be classed as "perlin" noise you need to calculate a dot product (surface normal I guess is one way to say it) and interpolate.

I'm completely new to procedural generation but I'd like to use it to generate dungeons. I have no idea how to start, so I was wondering if there were any good examples or tutorials for starting with procedural generation

>>31744

Depends on what kind of game and what kind of dungeons you are making. If you're interested in minecraft-style generation, look at http://accidentalnoise.sourceforge.net/minecraftworlds.html

If you're interested in Daggerfall-style dungeons: http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Dungeons

If you're after something nethack-style: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AAdonaac/20150903/252889/Procedural_Dungeon_Generation_Algorithm.php

And finally, there's also the classic Legend of Zelda style, which doesn't require too much explanation.

>>31760

Thanks for the links, the nethack one looks very promising!

Beta testing is probably the best option. There's a lot more to it than tweaking numbers though. Unit X might be superior when played a certain way against Unit Y, unless Unit Y uses Z strategy. Shit's complicated. Probably best to tweak as best as you can, and just hope nobody finds an exploit. If they do, you're gonna end up in the whole nerf/buff cycle. Also there's no need for 100% balance, it just doesn't need to be terribly unbalanced. People will develop strategies to counter minor unbalances.

>>31563

How would I get the initial balance right? Or is it simply a matter of setting some "finger in the air" numbers and just tweak like crazy for 100's of games? Balance is extremely important to my game, so I want to try and be scientific about it. I know that in the end gameplay and experience wins over statistically accurate models, but if my game has 1000's of gameplay options, I think that doing this statistically will cover more scenarios quicker than just tweaking as I beta test.

I doubt there's a formula you can use to ensure the initial figures are balanced. Too many variables to consider. I think the only real automated solution would be AI vs AI testing. But AI would not play the same way as humans.

>>31560

>I am thinking I could run game move simulations in the spreadsheet?

Absolutely. Excel/VBA is a very good fit for what you are talking about.

I've seen people taking a specific part of the throwing random action a million time by a CPU. They usually save the result in a hash table in which they key is a list of action/item/card... used in order in the test and look toward the ratio of success/failure by each key. It's extremly effective for card game apparently.

Sometime, when there's no absolute solution, you can only find your answer by doing empirical test.

>>31421

I'll give a response some time soon, but don,t have the time to invest in a decent reply right now.

>>31448

Whenever man, I'm not going anywhere. I appreciate the time you've already given me.

>>31421

In all honesty, we've approached the limit of complexity that a AAA studio's money-handlers are going to approve of funding. If you implement what you've got right now as a 3D simulation (using only x and y coords for movement), you'll have something special that non-technical people can admire. If you can find any nice assets to put over said simulation, all the better.

If you want to make it far more complex, however, here are some more considerations.

Does a car's position from point A to point B factor into lane switching? (ie, can two cars be side by side, restricting lane switching?) If so, can cars collide by switching lanes into occupied positions?

If a car brakes faster than the one behind it, is there a collision?

If there is a collision, how does this effect path finding? (ie will cars all get in another lane to avoid the lane with the collision?)

You describe the lane-switching logic as if the people will always make good decisions. Is there some percentage chance a person will make a bad choice?

What of stop signs and lights?

This could keep going, unfortunately.

>>31421

This is too complicated to start out with. There's a reason why the early Sim City games didn't have this kind of thing. Make a graph of interconnected intersections. Each path has a capacity of X cars based on various factors. Cars will try to path along the intersections to their destination. Each tick, cars will offload from one path to another in FIFO order. Then you can work on the other parts of the game.

use the ppu and apu core from a nes emulator but with modern control logic sans fpu arithmetic.

>>28134

nasir did it 30 years ago on an apple IIl

>>18753

I would accept 8 bit for art style, but I would avoid imposing limitations of the 8 bit era if it meant a game would be worse off.

However, there can be things learned about keeping code compact in genreal by learning why nintendo programmed games the way they did in the 8 bit era.

>>28134

Yes, in fact it looks like all modern NES development is done by one-man teams

I hope this isn't too off-topic, so let me shorten it.

tl;dr

How do you deal with the psychological demands involved in developing games?

Do you have psychological problems? If so, what have you done to mitigate them?

shameless self bump

>>31526

/agdg/ would have more than a handful of released games if we knew the answer to that.

>>31525

I haven't released a game myself, but here's my two cents on how to deal with psychological problems from my experience:

Pretend you don't have these psychological problems. Try to avoid acknowledging them and just try to live life as if you're perfectly normal. And whatever you do, don't treat the psychological issues as some kind of disability.

Telling yourself; "I can't do X, because I'm too depressed/anxious/whatever" will only lead to failure.

Good luck with your game!

>>31526

i´m going to throw a hunch and say to use that on your game. Similar to what Neverending Nightmares dev had done. Try to convert that issue onto the game as a premise, mechanic or whatever and you might be able to do something different.

>>30128

>>If you don't start with C it will be harder for you to learn how to manage memory

What you really mean is ASM, and on platforms such as Gameboy or Sega Genesis.

That's when you really start to do some crazy shit for memory management.

>>31488

This meme needs to die.

Managing memory in C or C++ is easy if you take the time to learn how to do it.

And if you're making a game, you should be programming your own memory allocator anyway.

And that means conforming to the C++ STL Allocator model so that you can use the STL containers.

If you're only interested in PC, your own allocator isn't as important. But the second you need to do Network programming, Graphics programming (with OpenGL or some such), or need to be able to debug your own fucking code with a debugger, you damn well better be able to handle memory.

Otherwise, every programming problem you come across will become a question of "what existing library can I leverage?", and you'll forget how to be a fucking programmer.

This is like telling a driver that they don't need to worry about petrol.

>>31517

>"what existing library can I leverage?", and you'll forget how to be a fucking programmer.

haha sounds like a suit

>>31537

You know it

>>31437

Sounds like typical ideaguy shit driven by "I want dat porn".

>>31441

It's not, believe me

Your ideas are meta-tier unless you're already done or halfway in progress with storylines/routes manuscript and designs.

Games shouldn't be excessively "featureful" and if it is then it's considered as a sign that there is nothing holding everything together - a sign of weak story. The end.

A simple and compelling slice of life without using magic can top a "story with all that complicated magic nonsense chuunibyou bells and whistles".

>a game without game over

How?

A VN with 3D is just overkill.

If you are serious about 3D just do some yandere school clone or a pokemon-level of polygons (3D chibi).

I hope you're not that "babbys first dev" who just mixes everything good unders the sun into the blender. A game must be compelling not attention-grabbing.

Just use live2D.

Good luck.

So you can't provide good writing, grammar or spelling, you can't provide the art, what do you provide? Are you actually good at programming?

>>31445

>good at programming

You don't need such thing for porn game.

I posted a couple ideas to >>31374. Probably best to keep all the ideas in that thread.

Got an amazing concept for a game that seems doable. Mods please anchor this thread even though board's super slow lol

>like world of warcraft

Well, figuring out how to make a server and database would be high up on the list of you want to make an MMO of any style.

>>31381

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

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

Tell me about them, please

>>31395

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

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

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

>>31270

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>31352

To continue this thought now on a different machine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>31353

>>31352

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

I posted >>31269 for a reason.

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

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

>Dost thou love me?

>Y/N

>N

>But thou must!

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

>>31385

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

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

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

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

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

>>31275

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

>>31329

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

>>31329

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

>>31377

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

>>29484

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

>>29485

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