Game Development Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Game Development Megathread

«‹›623 »

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

Spotted a pretty cool project on reddit today, a procedural world generator that's based on geophysics:

https://github.com/Mindwerks/worldengine

Results are pretty impressive, especially as you crank up the number of plates. Is a bit too archipelago happy (probably due to issues with erosion) and it's horrible producing rivers but the landmasses themselves are believable and avoid that "perlin noise" look.

Best feature is it's got active development, which is pretty rare for this kind of software.

# ? Oct 29, 2015 21:20

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 25, 2024 11:49

Sistergodiva: Jan 3, 2006; I'm like you,
I have no shame.

Currently using Java and Slick2D, but I realized that it's not developed any more. Would it be worth it switching to mini2DX? It seems a bit of work, but I don't know if it's going to be a lot harder later. Being able to compile for ios and android also seems really nice. Since this is my first project, should I just finish it and make a the next one with another system? Is there any other Java game system people recomend over mini2dx for a 2d point and click game?

# ? Oct 30, 2015 15:47

Relaxodon: Oct 2, 2010

Sistergodiva posted:

Currently using Java and Slick2D, but I realized that it's not developed any more. Would it be worth it switching to mini2DX? It seems a bit of work, but I don't know if it's going to be a lot harder later. Being able to compile for ios and android also seems really nice. Since this is my first project, should I just finish it and make a the next one with another system? Is there any other Java game system people recomend over mini2dx for a 2d point and click game?

If you are working with Java you should take a look at Libgdx.

# ? Oct 30, 2015 17:07

Sistergodiva: Jan 3, 2006; I'm like you,
I have no shame.

Relaxodon posted:

If you are working with Java you should take a look at Libgdx.

Yeah, mini2dx is a layer on top of libgdx I think, not sure how it works or the terminology.

I changed over my project and fixed most things, but I can't really find a good way to get pixel color from a libgdx image. That was how I made my pathing maps with slick2d. I guess I could just use the tile map editor and make an invisible grid map and use that for pathing.

# ? Oct 30, 2015 17:54

Tann: Apr 1, 2009

Sistergodiva posted:

mini2dx

Huh, just looking up about this. It's hard to find out where it's different from LibGDX. Looks like it uses a Swing-style drawing thing maybe?

Anyway to get texture pixel colours from libgdx textures, you probably want to use the Pixmap class. Plus you can use these to create new textures at runtime! Hopefully mini2dx has this too.

# ? Oct 30, 2015 18:04

evilentity: Jun 25, 2010

Sistergodiva posted:

Yeah, mini2dx is a layer on top of libgdx I think, not sure how it works or the terminology.

I changed over my project and fixed most things, but I can't really find a good way to get pixel color from a libgdx image. That was how I made my pathing maps with slick2d. I guess I could just use the tile map editor and make an invisible grid map and use that for pathing.

You can get pixels from texture like that:

Java code:

TextureData td = texture.getTextureData();
td.prepare();
Pixmap pixmap = td.consumePixmap();
int pixel = pixmap.getPixel(0, 0);
Color.formatToColor(color, pixel);
pixmap.dispose();

It is probably a good idea to read relevant data and dispose the pixmap.

# ? Oct 31, 2015 17:18

Scaramouche: Mar 26, 2001; SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

Sorry if this is the wrong thread to ask; I asked in the retro games thread in games earlier but nobody has bit on it:

I'm starting some homebrew dreamcast development just to keep my mind busy, and I want to surprise a cousin of mine who's really helped me out in the past and is a total dreamcast fanatic. I'm comfortable with C++/gcc/etc from past work in games but have never really done anything on my own out of the box. Right now I'm roughly following this guide for toolchain setup:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=916501

(and good god cygwin is still a bitch to set up)

Anyone here done anything similar? Any 'gotchas' using KallistiOS as recommended here?

# ? Nov 2, 2015 01:11

Joda: Apr 24, 2010; When I'm off, I just like to really let go and have fun, y'know?; Fun Shoe

Not sure where to ask this question, but since I'm making a game I thought I'd try here. Are prefetch instructions widely enough implemented that I can compile my game with -fprefetch-loop-arrays (g++) without having to worry about compatibility?

# ? Nov 2, 2015 04:21

Nude: Nov 16, 2014; I have no idea what I'm doing.

Scaramouche posted:

Sorry if this is the wrong thread to ask; I asked in the retro games thread in games earlier but nobody has bit on it:

I'm starting some homebrew dreamcast development just to keep my mind busy, and I want to surprise a cousin of mine who's really helped me out in the past and is a total dreamcast fanatic. I'm comfortable with C++/gcc/etc from past work in games but have never really done anything on my own out of the box. Right now I'm roughly following this guide for toolchain setup:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=916501

(and good god cygwin is still a bitch to set up)

Anyone here done anything similar? Any 'gotchas' using KallistiOS as recommended here?

Not sure if this is helpful in anyway but I did small homebrew games for the PSP. You are going to probably encounter errors/problems that only you can fix, be prepared to read a lot of (hopefully) documented code and piece to together what everything means. I did all of this when I was a new to programming so it will be easier for you I'm sure. But it taught me a lot, I learned how to make a makefile, stack and heap, and render images. It was fun and totally worth it, because I was like my kid self would flip out if he saw what I could do.

# ? Nov 2, 2015 05:55

One Eye Open: Sep 19, 2006; Am I awake?

Joda posted:

Not sure where to ask this question, but since I'm making a game I thought I'd try here. Are prefetch instructions widely enough implemented that I can compile my game with -fprefetch-loop-arrays (g++) without having to worry about compatibility?

Depends on your platform. Prefetch instructions for x86 have been around since the first iteration of SSE. For more info, look here.

# ? Nov 2, 2015 09:58

Bacon Terrorist: May 7, 2010; to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

Hey guys, any tips for a complete novice with an idea for a fairly simple mobile game? I did some googling but half the results are just adverts for all-in-one software.

# ? Nov 3, 2015 12:33

anatomi: Jan 31, 2015

Unity is pretty simple and it can build for both iOS and Android.

# ? Nov 3, 2015 12:47

Bacon Terrorist: May 7, 2010; to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

Thanks! I'll give it a whirl.

# ? Nov 3, 2015 13:40

DStecks: Feb 6, 2012

anatomi posted:

Unity is pretty simple

That needs a great big loving asterisk marked "assuming you have a working knowledge of C# or Javascript". And if you do, yeah, it's a dream to use, but if by "complete novice" you mean zero prior experience with coding, then Unity isn't a good fit.

# ? Nov 3, 2015 14:27

Bacon Terrorist: May 7, 2010; to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

DStecks posted:

That needs a great big loving asterisk marked "assuming you have a working knowledge of C# or Javascript". And if you do, yeah, it's a dream to use, but if by "complete novice" you mean zero prior experience with coding, then Unity isn't a good fit.

Definitely the latter. The idea I have doesn't need particularly fancy graphics and the core gameplay would be pretty simple, the market for it would be people who like the theme anyway (trains) and people who like simple concepts that become tricky with time limits.

# ? Nov 3, 2015 17:32

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Sistergodiva posted:

Yeah, mini2dx is a layer on top of libgdx I think, not sure how it works or the terminology.

I changed over my project and fixed most things, but I can't really find a good way to get pixel color from a libgdx image. That was how I made my pathing maps with slick2d. I guess I could just use the tile map editor and make an invisible grid map and use that for pathing.

https://github.com/mattdesl/lwjgl-basics/wiki/LibGDX-Textures

TheresaJayne posted:

That sounds like what we used to do with the blitter on the Amiga, we would have a Large jpg/gif that had all the characters written down,

Mmmm Psygnosis font so sexy

# ? Nov 3, 2015 18:06

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

I thought they were "psychosis" for several years because the lettering in their company logo was illegible to me. This was years before the internet was available so I could not look it up so this does not mean I'm stupid. :colbert:

# ? Nov 3, 2015 18:15

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

xzzy posted:

I thought they were "psychosis" for several years because the lettering in their company logo was illegible to me. This was years before the internet was available so I could not look it up so this does not mean I'm stupid.

I always thought Br�derbund was "Borderbund" :v:

# ? Nov 3, 2015 18:29

Yodzilla: Apr 29, 2005; Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

I called id "eye dee" for well over a decade.

# ? Nov 3, 2015 19:15

Lowen SoDium: Jun 5, 2003; Highen Fiber; Clapping Larry

Yodzilla posted:

I called id "eye dee" for well over a decade.

I still do out of habit.

# ? Nov 3, 2015 22:05

SupSuper: Apr 8, 2009; At the Heart of the city is an Alien horror, so vile and so powerful that not even death can claim it.

Yodzilla posted:

I called id "eye dee" for well over a decade.

Wait it's not called that?

# ? Nov 3, 2015 22:34

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

SupSuper posted:

Wait it's not called that?

Its called "ee-duh" well... that's probably not right. I don't know how to make the pronunciation for it, just say it like its a word, not an acronym.

Its based on the Freudian sense of Id, like Id, Ego and Superego.

The Id, if you didn't know, is the part of your brain that gets off on simple poo poo like wants and needs, especially aggression or sexuality like tits and violence, so Id games were supposed to be games where you blow poo poo up without a ton of thinking going on. That was the joke, I guess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego

# ? Nov 3, 2015 22:51

PokeJoe: Aug 24, 2004; hail cgatan

I released my first non-trivial game recently. I wrote it in libgdx, which I felt was pretty easy to use. I don't really know a lot about game dev aside from what I've come up with on my own though, but I would like to learn more. Are there any good books on general game development available? More from the technical side of things than the design side.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mrg.joe.spacelord2.android&hl=en

# ? Nov 4, 2015 01:36

Tann: Apr 1, 2009

PokeJoe posted:

I released my first non-trivial game recently

Nice, seems to work well on my tablet!

# ? Nov 4, 2015 03:06

Gunzil: Jan 1, 2010

Any recommended engines / frameworks for making a rhythm game? It needs to have very low audio and input latency. I've tried using Unity3D and it had a noticeable delay when I tried to play a sound effect on user input. I also tried installing the FMOD plugin and that just seemed to make it worse.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 05:28

Fano: Oct 20, 2010

Gunzil posted:

Any recommended engines / frameworks for making a rhythm game? It needs to have very low audio and input latency. I've tried using Unity3D and it had a noticeable delay when I tried to play a sound effect on user input. I also tried installing the FMOD plugin and that just seemed to make it worse.

Probably not what you're looking for but Stepmania is an open source rhythm game based on DDR which has spawned quite a few releases, namely the In The Groove series in the arcades and more recently, Pulsen.

The interface is fully customizable through theming, the source code seems to be all over the place and I can't make heads or tails of it though, but I'm not a C++ developer.

I believe it supports keysounds but most content doesn't make use of it.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 06:29

Kaedric: Sep 5, 2000

I was thinking about dipping my toe into a space game, but I can't really wrap my head around how you would handle the actual scale of space. Just thinking something like a solar system you could navigate, I don't know how you would create assets in Unity that had the appropriate size.

What could you do to have a ship flying around (first person) and be very near a planet, something that would take up your entire screen if you were facing it? I imagine having an actual appropriately sized model would be out of the question?

I apologize if this sounds really basic or easy to figure out, I'm not really sure of the limitations of Unity in this regard. I have heard there's issues with distances and floating points, and I can only imagine having a huge zone like a solar system would go well beyond that.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 06:31

Dr. Stab: Sep 12, 2010; 👨🏻‍⚕️🩺🔪🙀😱🙀

This will explain everything:, and a whole lot more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXTxQko-JH0

# ? Nov 4, 2015 06:44

TheresaJayne: Jul 1, 2011

Zaphod42 posted:

Its called "ee-duh" well... that's probably not right. I don't know how to make the pronunciation for it, just say it like its a word, not an acronym.

Its based on the Freudian sense of Id, like Id, Ego and Superego.

The Id, if you didn't know, is the part of your brain that gets off on simple poo poo like wants and needs, especially aggression or sexuality like tits and violence, so Id games were supposed to be games where you blow poo poo up without a ton of thinking going on. That was the joke, I guess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego

I know the difference id (ihd) is the bit that gets angry when you get pwnd.

id (eye dee) is what you (normally) have to show to buy a copy of GTA5

# ? Nov 4, 2015 07:21

Ralith: Jan 12, 2011; I see a ship in the harbor
I can and shall obey
But if it wasn't for your misfortune
I'd be a heavenly person today

Kaedric posted:

I was thinking about dipping my toe into a space game, but I can't really wrap my head around how you would handle the actual scale of space. Just thinking something like a solar system you could navigate, I don't know how you would create assets in Unity that had the appropriate size.

What could you do to have a ship flying around (first person) and be very near a planet, something that would take up your entire screen if you were facing it? I imagine having an actual appropriately sized model would be out of the question?

I apologize if this sounds really basic or easy to figure out, I'm not really sure of the limitations of Unity in this regard. I have heard there's issues with distances and floating points, and I can only imagine having a huge zone like a solar system would go well beyond that.

This is one of the things where using an off-the-shelf engine might actually make your life harder than the alternative. Representing entire planets at acceptable detail is also an interesting research area in its own right. There's a reason most space games actually have pretty small play areas (on an astronomical scale). Are you sure you need 1:1?

# ? Nov 4, 2015 07:38

Stick100: Mar 18, 2003

Kaedric posted:

I was thinking about dipping my toe into a space game, but I can't really wrap my head around how you would handle the actual scale of space. Just thinking something like a solar system you could navigate, I don't know how you would create assets in Unity that had the appropriate size.

What could you do to have a ship flying around (first person) and be very near a planet, something that would take up your entire screen if you were facing it? I imagine having an actual appropriately sized model would be out of the question?

I apologize if this sounds really basic or easy to figure out, I'm not really sure of the limitations of Unity in this regard. I have heard there's issues with distances and floating points, and I can only imagine having a huge zone like a solar system would go well beyond that.

http://www.davenewson.com/dev/unity-notes-on-rendering-the-big-and-the-small

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXTxQko-JH0

You have to fake it. As the first link would tell you Space isn't infinite but it's big so instead you work with a smaller local space and fake the things farther away. Those 2 links show how other people have done Space games in Unity.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 15:34

DStecks: Feb 6, 2012

Does Unity do some kind of wonky-rear end multithreading with scripts? Because I'm finding that I often lack the ability to ensure that one piece of code fully executes before another, even within the same drat method.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 16:54

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

DStecks posted:

Does Unity do some kind of wonky-rear end multithreading with scripts? Because I'm finding that I often lack the ability to ensure that one piece of code fully executes before another, even within the same drat method.

Not unless you're using coroutines.

(you should NEVER use coroutines)

# ? Nov 4, 2015 17:22

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Kaedric posted:

I was thinking about dipping my toe into a space game, but I can't really wrap my head around how you would handle the actual scale of space. Just thinking something like a solar system you could navigate, I don't know how you would create assets in Unity that had the appropriate size.

What could you do to have a ship flying around (first person) and be very near a planet, something that would take up your entire screen if you were facing it? I imagine having an actual appropriately sized model would be out of the question?

I apologize if this sounds really basic or easy to figure out, I'm not really sure of the limitations of Unity in this regard. I have heard there's issues with distances and floating points, and I can only imagine having a huge zone like a solar system would go well beyond that.

Its a huge challenge, which is why basically zero commercial games have attempted it so far. Those that have so far like X3 or Freespace just handle the space side of things, and planets are just big floating spheres with decorations. Actually handling realistic-scale planets is extremely difficult but with modern technology it is do-able. No Man's Sky will be the first to actually make a commercial game out of it AFAIK.

Like Ralith said, doing it right means developing your own in-house software from the ground up, pretty much. I worked on an MMORPG for a few years (sadly cancelled) which aimed to do exactly this, and in working on our engine we optioned several existing engines, but found that pretty much none of them would really work for what we wanted to do. There was one French company making a very similar game and we almost partnered up with them, but didn't at the last moment because of disagreements about source or something stupid.

There's a lot of clever tricks you can do, which you pretty much have to because actually simulating something the size of a solar system is beyond our computational capabilities. Generally you're going to need to have several levels of detail which you switch between for all celestial bodies. Our engine had 12 LOD versions of each planet, which we would smoothly transition between as you approached the surface. No Man's Sky is using a procedural system for everything which lets them dynamically generate LODs as they need to on the fly.

If you're just in space and don't need to be able to land on the planets / zoom around under orbit, then all you have to do is use a cube with a nice shader on it, its that simple. But if you want to be able to fly down to the whole planet and have it be planet sized, you gotta get really super loving creative with the custom technology.

There were some white papers written on the tech that we based our engine on (and hired one of the guys who wrote it) but I can't remember what it was called exactly :v:

Sorry.

Yeah you definitely can't just throw the whole system into floating point, that doesn't work.

The upside of space is that its so loving big you can get away with cheating like crazy and nobody will ever notice. And by cheating I don't mean moving things closer together, I mean the solar system doesn't actually have to be a single instanced space, as long as you can smoothly transition between different sub-spaces.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 17:31

Kaedric: Sep 5, 2000

Dr. Stab posted:

This will explain everything:, and a whole lot more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXTxQko-JH0

Thank you for the link, it was very informative. That helps me understand more about the limitations. Now I just need to determine how such tricks could be applied on a multiplayer authoritative server! Keeping track of player positions across vast distances sounds harrowing... but I guess Elite did it?

Stick100 posted:

http://www.davenewson.com/dev/unity-notes-on-rendering-the-big-and-the-small

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXTxQko-JH0

You have to fake it. As the first link would tell you Space isn't infinite but it's big so instead you work with a smaller local space and fake the things farther away. Those 2 links show how other people have done Space games in Unity.

Yeah that's what I thought

That first link confirms that multiplyer would be pretty rough. I wonder if other multiplayer space games are doing something like creating 'instances' at certain locations, or when you pop out of FTL, and otherwise maintaining your position much more vaguely while you are traveling.

Ralith posted:

This is one of the things where using an off-the-shelf engine might actually make your life harder than the alternative. Representing entire planets at acceptable detail is also an interesting research area in its own right. There's a reason most space games actually have pretty small play areas (on an astronomical scale). Are you sure you need 1:1?

No, I probably don't need 1:1... I just WANT it

# ? Nov 4, 2015 17:36

blastron: Dec 11, 2007; Don't doodle on it!

The trick with space games is that the planets are so vastly far away (compared to nearby things like asteroids and other ships) that they're effectively part of the background. As such, you can render the scene in two passes: one pass in a scale model of the solar system, and one in a more typical, interactive scene. That way, you don't need to worry about having astronomical-scale draw distances.

e: God drat it the mobile app didn't load the rest of the posts for some reason, sorry for the redundancy

# ? Nov 4, 2015 17:39

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Kaedric posted:

Yeah that's what I thought That first link confirms that multiplyer would be pretty rough. I wonder if other multiplayer space games are doing something like creating 'instances' at certain locations, or when you pop out of FTL, and otherwise maintaining your position much more vaguely while you are traveling.

Its not really "vague" but yeah. EVE and Elite Dangerous have space at one scale, and then whenever you pop out of warp speed somewhere you get put into a custom instance that represents a certain space like 1000km x 1000km or whatever, and then other people tracking you down or whatever get put into the same instance if there is one. If they're too far away when they leave warp then they get put into a different instance, and as you approach each other you'll either get switched to the other person's instance or they'll get merged.

EVE is pretty much held together by piling years of duct tape over years of duct tape though, its a wonder anything works at all. Elite is more modern and so works a lot better, the transitions are smoother and you can warp freely between systems without having to use jump-points, although the effect is still pretty much the same. (Outside of systems you aren't really travelling anywhere, you're just in a private instance killing time watching a wormhole while you get teleported from one system's grid to the other's.)

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Nov 4, 2015

# ? Nov 4, 2015 17:54

RoboCicero: Oct 22, 2009; "I'm sick and tired of reading these posts!"

Shalinor posted:

Not unless you're using coroutines.

(you should NEVER use coroutines)

Except when building out a turn-based strategy game, right? :goleft:

(Please tell me that I didn't shoot myself in the foot making this thing 80% coroutines)

# ? Nov 4, 2015 18:13

Ralith: Jan 12, 2011; I see a ship in the harbor
I can and shall obey
But if it wasn't for your misfortune
I'd be a heavenly person today

Zaphod42 posted:

Its a huge challenge, which is why basically zero commercial games have attempted it so far. Those that have so far like X3 or Freespace just handle the space side of things, and planets are just big floating spheres with decorations. Actually handling realistic-scale planets is extremely difficult but with modern technology it is do-able. No Man's Sky will be the first to actually make a commercial game out of it AFAIK.

Is No Man's Sky actually to-scale? All the media I've scene of it suggests a highly compressed scale.

There's also Infinity: Battlescape which is true 1:1 and uses custom technology that's been in development for like 15 years. Lots of procedural graphics shenanigans there, too. Not sure what their physics story is. Seems like they don't use instancing, so they must have some pretty crazy automatic LoD going on.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 18:27

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 25, 2024 11:49

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Ralith posted:

Is No Man's Sky actually to-scale? All the media I've scene of it suggests a highly compressed scale.

NMS is being ridiculously vague about all the details which is getting somewhat infuriating, the lead dev just goes up and stammers and "hums" and "haws" his way through interviews where he gets really excited about the potential but doesn't really nail much down.

The planets may not be to-scale exactly but they're definitely bigger contiguous spaces than any other game I've ever seen. If they're not actually to-scale then they're like, moon-scale or something. They're definitely really really really loving huge.

Ralith posted:

There's also Infinity: Battlescape which is true 1:1 and uses custom technology that's been in development for like 15 years. Lots of procedural graphics shenanigans there, too. Not sure what their physics story is. Seems like they don't use instancing, so they must have some pretty crazy automatic LoD going on.

I'll have to find the article, I was juuuust reading about how their team bit off way more than they could chew. They're having to ask for more money and re-design the game to be far far far smaller in scope so that they may actually finish it at one point.

Honestly indie teams have no business trying to pull off a space game of this scale. Its like an MMO, its something that just inherently should not be kickstarted. Its a huge loving obstacle.

There's this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/28/infinity-battlescape-kickstarter/ but its not the article I was talking about.

They're definitely gutting the game design though and turning it into a multiplayer shooter because they can't do a full space MMO thing.

# ? Nov 4, 2015 18:54

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Game Development Megathread

«‹›623 »