Game Design Megathread

[McJob]

I've been thinking really hard about this for a while now. The mechanics are becoming really clear cut and specific. The theoretical kinks have, for the most part, been worked out, and implementation of a vertical slice can begin (I was being held back because I didn't have a solid idea on how to make a good level, because I knew I was missing some pieces of the puzzle). There's just one issue, however.

I started working on this project as a LEGO fangame for two critical reasons; the first is that I wanted to prove to LEGO that you could make a LEGO game with respect to the company's values which didn't have to be repetitive trash, and the second is that I wanted the mega reputation hit that would come out of working with a popular IP.

Unfortunately, there's three major issues; firstly, under no circumstances when I work with the LEGO brand may I obtain profit. Likely not even donations. I would have to work entirely for free, and I'm not exactly swimming in bank notes. Secondly, even if I stick to the no-payment rule, there's the big chance that LEGO may rock on down and tell me to scrap literally everything, and I don't have the means to fight their legal team. Finally, making a game intended for children means having to really cut down on content and mechanics to fit the audience (I have designed the rules for a Kids Mode, but it means a lot of extra work on top of the other modes), which means suboptimal conditions to really test this approach and keep myself engaged.

The options I'm left with are:

• Face the risks and stick with the LEGO theme for the rep.
• Forge my path and make some cash.
• Go the Blockland Route and use Generic Bricks to achieve a similar, but legal for tender product.

What's my best choice here? And what kind of story aesthetic should I be aiming for?

A part of me sees the slight irony in being based in Sydney and making a detective game to create my reputation based on things I didn't like from a detective game made in Sydney that killed the reputation (and company) of that studio.

[Ad Bot]

[Waru]

blockland style

[chrisbot6]

Early concept art of the first (repeating) room of SUPER_ALCHEMIST.
Note how there's nothing outside the window yet, light isn't being cast and it's not obvious where the door is.


Different locations have different palletes. Note that since this is concept art, this is minus the effects of the game's lighting.

I've drawn some early concept art of the magic system:

Basically it's a combination of Unreal Blueprint and Psi Gridcad - you place blocks on a grid (which can be triangular, square or hexagonal depending on the weapon you're "developing" for) to control spell behavior. The first one above, for example, makes an entity explode when they are hit by the projectile.

We've come pretty far since this:

[Waru]

I actually hate how stupid some of the stuff in Unity is. I hate that I have to declare public GameObjects and then drag the prefab into the inspector and set it that way. Why can't I just reference the prefab directly? So many little nuances make making anything semi productive take loving ages. I hate it.

[lordician]

I hate that I have to declare public GameObjects and then drag the prefab into the inspector and set it that way. Why can't I just reference the prefab directly? So many little nuances make making anything semi productive take loving ages. I hate it.

Ah, something i actually also encountered in my Unity adventure back in the days.
That and code randomly stopping to function for no reason until you restart Unity made developing in Unity a bloody mess sometimes.

[beachbum111111]

I remember some dev buddies of mine telling me that the advantages of Unity compared to Unreal is that there is more documentation and it's more of a pain in the ass to create textures in Unreal then in Unity, and while the texture part is true literally every other 3d modelling program I've used use a VERY similar system to Unreals.

[McJob]

I work with Unity day in, day out.

It is the biggest pile of garbage in the game development scene. Your buddies are full of stuff.

[beachbum111111]

What are your biggest gripes with it? I've had major issues but that probably has more to do with my incompetence then anything.

[crazies alt]

can anyone sugguest cool audio editing software so i can create cool gun sound effects

[Legodude77]

What are your biggest gripes with it? I've had major issues but that probably has more to do with my incompetence then anything.

What I've heard from others about hating Unity is that a lot of the times you'll run into something the engine cannot support/perform by default and so you have to code that in manually. I'm talking about modifying the engine itself just to get something to work. Sure you can do the same in Unreal, but a problem Unity could have would be something Unreal could easily handle with no modifications. That's just a basic rundown of what I've seen others complain about Unity, I use Unreal and have not tried out Unity yet.

[chrisbot6]

Working on something for a friend. It looks really nice!

[Foxscotch]

Working on something for a friend. It looks really nice!

hard to read white text on that light water background. not sure what I could suggest that would still keep the aesthetic though

[otto-san]

hard to read white text on that light water background. not sure what I could suggest that would still keep the aesthetic though

agreed. a darker outline would probably help a lot

[chrisbot6]

Will do. Keep in mind though, the background is random. It won't always be water.

Menu's on hold for now, I'm working on camera controls and world rendering. The world is currently stored in a fixed-size 2D array, which won't work in the long run because it needs to be infinite for my purposes. I've been trying to work out how to do that in GameMaker.




This centring may look pretty simple but believe me it took a good hour to get the view not to jump towards the top left whenever I zoom in.

As it's a demo, I can make it do stupid things too:


(SUPER_ALCHEMIST's still going, just waiting on art)

[crazies alt]

what is it anyway?