What are the other three "game dynamics"? Seth Priebatsch recently gave a tedtalk entitled Building the game layer on top of the world. In it, Seth described four game dynamics, techniques used by game designers to make games fun and addictive. The four dynamics that Priebtsch described were Appointment dynamic a dynamic in which to succeed, one must return at a predefined time to take a predetermined action. (Real life example happy hour) Influence and status the ability of one player to modify the behavior of another's actions through social pressure. (Example different color credit cards as a reflection of status) Progression dynamic a dynamic in which success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks. (Example linkedin profile progress bar) Communal discovery a dynamic wherein an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a challenge. (Example finding interesting content on Digg.com) Seth explained these four game dynamics in his talk and added that his company has an additional three. Does anyone know (or have any theories) about what the other three game dynamics are?


Server client communication Quick and verbose or involved and compact? TL DR Does the short development time required for HTTP XML offset its size issues compared to developing a custom protocol? As some of you might have divined I'm currently working on a turn based strategy game of the massively multiplayeriffic variety. The target turn length is anywhere from 6 hours and up, so synchronization will be, on the whole, a bit easier than, say, an FPS or an MMORPG. The issue then, is how the clients connect to the server. As I see it, I have basically two options HTTP using some manner of XML exchange, or direct socket communication using some arcane protocol. Because casual gaming is the "big thing" nowadays the idea is that the game will be the sort of game where you can pick it up, play for 5 or 10 minutes, and then put it down and come back the day after an approach that would greatly benefit from having the communication be stateless (as in HTTP). On the other hand, target devices include the iPad and (perhaps) other mobile devices down the road any protocol used would probably benefit greatly from being compact, if not so much for the speed (see above), but more in order to not cost the user everything he has if he plays on the road using cellular data networks. On the gripping hand using HTTP as the basic communication protocol greatly facilitates the creation of a web based client. All of this leaves me, as far as I can see, anyway, with 3 options XML over HTTP A bit of bloat, but easy to implement in all cases. Custom protocol Allows for a very streamlined protocol, but trickier to implement. All of the above Small protocol for application clients big protocol for web clients, increases implementation complexity and maintenance time required geometrically. Does the short development time required for HTTP XML offset its size issues compared to developing a custom protocol?


Authoritative Server Movement and Collision I am attempting to write a proof of concept in preparation to do my first networked game. I have decided to do an authoritative server with client side prediction. I am trying to implement my architecture like this diagram from an excellent article on the subject In the article, the data that is synchronized is the player's position. This works great for turn based games, but what about real time games? In my game, each entity has a position and a velocity vector. It is the server's job to detect collisions. I have attempted to send the server velocity changes, but I am having an issue where the server's position and the client's position begins to diverge because their clocks are not perfectly synchronized. So my question is, is it standard practice to send positions as the synchronized state between a client and server instead of a velocity vector? Will changing to synchronizing positions instead of velocities open my game up to cheating? Is there a better way to synchronize the players' states with the server? Also, if I use positions, doesn't that mean that the other players are going to be seen in a past state? Will that mean that the server might send a player killed message before the collision is visible to the player in the present?


what should the size of a flash game in Facebook be I'm developing a flash game and i want to put it in Facebook ,My question is the Proper maximum size for it. 500 KB 1 MB ??


Defensive statistic mechanics There are many systems where attack statistics are opposed by defense statistics Strict HP (damage defense) Threshold HP (damage defense? damage 0) Reciprocal HP (damage defense) Just to name a few, and there are variations on those as well Reciprocal threshold HP damage defense ? (damage defense) 0 Note that this is by no means an exhaustive list, since many games use multiple stats to arrive at a final "defensive" result (agility, current speed, movement relative to attacker, flanking) that's applied to any potential damage. What drives the selection of one relationship over another?


Player stats include additional attribute I am currently running a role playing game called DNDBBS and would like to know If there is stats for Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Piety, should there be one for Charisma? Is this standard DND? Edited 07 31 2018 11 00 00 CST The DNDBBS is a Modem (POTS) oriented multi node text based Adventure game. It can be found on google or http www.filegate.net pdnbasic Edited 08 03 2018 21 25 00 CST I decided to also add Beauty and Glamour for Lady class.


Turning a board game idea into a browser based, slow paced gameplay Suppose I want to create a strategy game with global mutable state shared between all players (think game board). But unlike a board game, I don't want it to be real time action and or turn based. Instead, players should be able to log in at any time of the day and spend a fixed number of action points per day as they wish. As opposed to a few hours, game sessions would run over a few weeks. This is meant to reward good strategy rather than time spent playing (as an alternative, hardcore players could always play multiple games in parallel instead) as well as all kind of issues related to live playing like disconnections and synchronization. The game should remain addictive still have a low time investment footprint for casual players. So far so good, but this still leaves open the question of when to solve actions and when they should be visible. I want to avoid "ninja play" like doing all your moves just a few minutes before daily point reset to take other players by surprise, or people spamming F5 to place a well timed action which would defeat the whole point of a non real time game. I thought of a couple of approaches to that Resolve all events in a single scheduled process running once a day. This basically means a "blind" gameplay where players can take actions but don't see their results immediately. The thing is, I played a similar browser game a few years ago and didn't like the fact that you feel disconnected and powerless until there's that deus ex machina telling you what really happened during all that time. You see the world evolve in large increments of one day, which often doesn't seem like seeing it evolve at all. For actions that have an big impact on the game or on other players (attacks, big achievements), make them visible to everyone immediately but delay their effect by something like 24 hours. Opposing players could be notified when such an event happens, so that they can react to it. Do you have any other ideas how I could go about solving this ? Are there any known approaches in similar existing games ?


How should I design my score to visually accommodate large numbers? I am creating a simple punching game that counts the total number of punches dealt. Could you suggest a way for my game to visually accommodate very large numbers ( 100000). Currently my wire frame looks like this How should I display very large numbers here? I thought about shrinking the fonts, and creating abbreviations, but I'm not sure it's the proper way to go.


Investigation stage before starting a game I was thinking about how to organize the stage about getting informed about whatever game is needed to develop, what would others do. For example, if I wanted to develop a game about car racing, I should figure out all the factors during the race, from the car factor to the pilots, etc., environmental factors like weather, circuit conditions, etc. How does one manage this stage? Thanks.


Developing internet sweepstake games I have absolutely no idea about game developing but want to know following things about internet sweepstake games Click on demo and play any of the game. What technology (programming language) is used to develop these games. e.g. Flash, Silverlight, etc. If I wish to develop such game(s) what is the best technology to use, how much time it might take to learn and develop a simple commercial product. Is the algorithm code behind the scene re usable while changing the front graphics. I mean a scalable adjustible game. In case I wish to hire a game programmer what would be the approximate cost or per hr charge for such developer. Any good books or online tutorial videos to learn see this in action? Or any other ideas or suggestions? Sorry if these are lot of questions but this is the only good place I see asking such questions. I will more than happy to post them as separate questions if that is necessary.


Why should I choose to design a health bar rather than heart containers? When designing any hero based game, be it adventure, RPG, brawler, or similar, you eventually need to decide on your health system. Barring any regenerative systems with zero UI (like Call of Duty), should you use a discrete set of heart containers, Zelda style, or a continuous health bar, like Street Fighter? Here are some points of contention that I've been thinking about Hearts are easier to understand (very clear how many hits you can take) Hearts give a better sense of accomplishment when expanding (A whole extra heart! Rather than just a slightly longer bar (or worse, no change)) Hearts grow to take up a lot of screen real estate, while health bars can stay compact Health bars allow for really fine control over health damage balancing (using float rather than int) Since I haven't been able to find any relevant game design articles on the subject, I'd really appreciate if everyone with some knowledge on the matter, or even just some insightful links would contribute, thanks!


Correctly done level scaling? A lot of role playing games have a system where npcs scale with the player level and become stronger, on the surface it might seem genial but in most games either it doesn't change anything or it makes low levels enemies ridiculously hard to beat or sometimes impossible, like in oblivion. I came up with the idea of making nps not scale with the level of the player but scale with stats. For example a level 1 wolf has a base attack that deals 5 of the players maximum HP as damage with each hit, but is mitigated by defense. Therefore the attack will remain consistent in strength even when the player is max level but can be blocked by sacrificing damage to build a lot of denfese or by becoming better at parrying attacks. Is there any other mechanism I can implement to make the npcs stronger through all the levels without making them ridiculously invincible or giving them one hit mechanics that instantly kill the player?


Articles about a plot in an open world There are plenty of articles about open world game design and writing plots. But have you guys come across articles or blog entries about designing an engaging plot in an open world game? What i mean by this? In TES Morrowind you're introduced to mechanics and are given the "main quest" within the first 5 minutes and then you're free to go, learn, kill, do whatever you want. I've spent hundreds of hours playing the game, but i have never got to doing the "main quest" and i'm sure alot of people are in the same situation, be it Morrowind, Oblivion or Skyrim. Maybe it's the power of TES games and a true testiment to how great RPGs they are, however for me, thinking as a designer, it seems like a massive design failure. Maybe it's the fact that there's no actual threat that needs to be dealt with, maybe it's that, amongs all the well designed and interesting quest within the game, the "main quest" just doesn't seem so interesting. I've got a game idea in the back of my head, i want to create an action platformer, but the "level selection" would be open world style "dunegons" like you find in MMOs. This is a vague and undeveloped idea, so don't focus on it, i didn't give this design much thought, however an issue arose, i can't figure out, in general, how to make the player care about the open world aspect (f.e. dealing with roaming, pillaging parties, doing a gauntlet run to get some special armor, clearing a water source from enemies, etc.) while "forcing him" to finish the game, carrot on a stick kind of way. There are "crazy" people who will go search everywhere between cutscenes in FF games, but i'm aiming at the general audience. I want to create a subtle system for guiding people throughout the game to a goal, while giving them an option of gaining power any way they want. This may aswell be impossible, but it doesn't hurt to ask. I'm looking for articles or musings on this matter. Not solutions (since there's no design document, no direct solutions matter at this point), just thoughts from other people, probably with other games as a reference.


How to make players be creative in a game, if the game cannot evaluate it? I am working on a prototype game with several funny visual effects that the player can trigger. The player can be quite creative in the way to use or combine these effects but it seems impossible to make detect evaluate this creativity by the computer. So, from a game design perspective, I wonder what could be the features to drive the players to be creative (experiment various combinations). For the moment i think about "Draw something" where the result is evaluated by other players. I think about levels designed by "Little Big Planet" players but this aspect is out of the core game. I think also about "Minecraft" but I do not understand really how this game encourages the people to be creative (except of the open world). Please tell me if you have any ideas, articles or references that could help me coping with this problem.


Board Game Design in Cocos2d I am going to start a chess like board game. And for that I have reviewed a number of things available. One is http www.mapeditor.org , using which you can create a grid base games. Another option is geekgameboard for iphone available at http mooseyard.lighthouseapp.com projects 23201 geekgameboard Now I want your expert opinion on what would be better to make a game in cocos2d, using the first option or the second option? Both looks promising to me and give good control over board design. PS Sorry for duplicates, I found about the https gamedev.stackexchange.com lately after posting it on stackexchange. So I am just posting it here again as I feel this is a more relevant board.


How to make 4 way walking animation in game maker studio 2? So I am trying to make a 4 way movement for my character, and I cant seem to get the walking animations to work for it. The character moves fine, but whenever he moves, the walking animation doesn't play. I figured it was because I made it so when the button was held down, it put it as the sprite for that direction constantly, so it could never get to the next frame. does anyone know how to bypass this? (btw I am using D amp D)


How to make healing in an exploration game interesting I'm creating a game with a heavy focus on exploration, though I'm at a bit of a loss for healing. The problem is that I don't like the idea of enemies randomly dropping health, as this usually results in grinding when at low health and not near any healing stations(Metroid, Axiom Verge), and I don't want to copy the Soul Focus system from Hollow Knight(Combat system has already been stolen by me 3), but Hollow Knight is the only game I've played with a focus on exploration that made healing interesting. I've also thought of auto regeneration, however that can easily lead to the player cowarding during a boss fight while they heal, and that would break the flow of the gameplay. I've also considered something like striking a foe heals 1 8th of a health point, however this leads to the player feeling less tense after they take a gain 1 8th which will keep them from dying if they get hit again, and it makes the game feel like its all offense and little defense. I've also though about an items approach where the player has to eat something or drink something to heal, however this doesn't really encourage healing as once you run out of items, you can no longer heal until you get some more(Legend of Zelda). I've also though about no healing at all, however I noticed that when exploring and then you take a dumb hit before a hard boss, or a dumb hit before the boss gets hard(cough Cuphead cough), the player will just either commit suicide or run back to a healing station. What can I do to make healing interesting, and not break the flow of gameplay? This is a 2D platformer, and jumping is really important in the combat.


Personal Custom Card Game I had the idea, to make a custom card game based off an Anime i like. I was wondering if it would be legal to have such printed out (using a custom card board game service) for personal use. I would only play it with friends and not make any money off of it.


How can I encourage population balance between two factions? I'm making a game in which players must choose between two factions after reaching a certain level. PvP and PvE are not influenced by this choice as it's mostly for role play and the sense of belonging to a community (and perhaps seasonal events). The two factions can communicate. Preferably, guild members must be in the same faction and it should be impossible or not easy to change factions. I fear that if a faction starts to have the majority of players, new players will want to join it to play with their friends or have more guild choices. How could I mitigate or prevent that? Are there alternatives?


Can i make a Game for play store on my own I am not sure what i am asking for. Sorry if this question look stupid. I love to play games on android and pc . Some times very cool ideas strike me , but i don't know what to do with them. and they vanish over time. I got no computer science background , since i am a math student . Although i learned C for a week for a exam. In short I know C but just the alphabets. Is it possible that i can learn to make games. What should i have to learn. Is it possible to learn from youtube. Since it's like side hobby i can give it few hours a day ( not money ).


I need an enemy spawning algorithm for a 2D tower defense I need an enemies spawning algorithm for a 2D tower defense game. I have 4 maps, each has 4 stages and each stage has 40 rounds. I need to create an algorithm which will instantiate waves, increase health and change their type in new rounds, new stages and in new maps. I need your suggestions and ideas to resolve my problem. It should be done like in geoDefense and Fieldrunners. Lets take an example which is somewhat in my mind MAP1 Stage 1, on Rounds 1,2,3,4 loop around with ' 5' on it so also in Rounds 6,7,8,9 ...so on... instantiate 'Type 1 swarm' after increment( 5) add 'Type 1 swarm some value' so that if previous 'Type 1 swarm' (on rounds 1,2,3,4) has 3 enemies, after above increment( 5) 'Type 1 swarm' has 3 some value. The rounds multiple of 5 will instantiate 'Type 2 swarm some value', and as round increases health value should also increase. On Map 1 Stage2 and other Maps and stages repeat the above process with some slight difficulty and change type swarm1 and swarn2 with other swarn types. I hope you people got what I actually need. I don't want to hardcode the rounds because there is also an endless option in my game and hard level would have 100 rounds instead of 40. Any other spawning ideas algorithms followed by TD game programmers designers.


How to show your game vision? I am developing a game and have a clear vision of how it works, what key features it has and how it should look alike. But when it comes to introduce the designer I feel a little bit lost. I have no graphics talent so I try to pitch it with mockups and text. But I guess there are better ways or methods to get it on paper how would they look like?


Why do RPGs let you know how much XP you need to level up? I was reading this article called Behavioral Game Design, and it says ...how do we make players maintain a high, consistent rate of activity? ... the answer is a variable ratio schedule, one where each response has a chance of producing a reward. RPGs (I'm thinking of traditional JRPGs like Final Fantasy 1 6) don't do this when it comes to leveling up characters. You can always pause the game and look at how much XP you need to level up again. I haven't played WoW before, but I suspect it lets you know how much XP you need to level up, too. In WoW, there's plenty of examples of "variable ratio schedule" elsewhere in the game, so why not when it comes to XP you need to level up? I suspect most professional game designers know the lessons in this article. So why is it typical for the XP you need for the next level to be known? They could design the game so that it's random, where you never know how many enemies you need to kill for that next level. So why don't they use this as an opportunity to have a "variable ratio schedule"?


How to draw a charts by flash cs5 Hey all , I want to make something more interesting in my game some thing like a charts Analysis for a flash game. When THE PLAYER FINISH THE GAME . The score appears in charts . I want to integrate it with actionscript3 . NOTE The game is 60 seconds only I want to draw the score of the user in Y axis And the Time in X axis . I read before about highcharts, but i didn't get much information if there are something easier I'll be grateful . something like that


Things that make a game more interesting for kids What makes a game more interesting or fun to play for children ages 8 to 14 ? Does the age of the consumer play an important role in his her interest in the game? What can I put in a game to make it more fun, educational, and interesting to play?


How to design AI to understand its selling decisions? I am programming a game where there are 4 competitors (players) who have finished goods that they can then sell to given markets for which they have (at most a single) contracts for. Any finished goods is for a given market. Turn order is important in the game as this will decide who sells first. Scenario. Turn order Player A, C, D, B The problem I'm having is I have no idea how to make the AI players aware of the following factors they seem to need to know a lot of things which may impact on where to sell first. For example, AI needs to know. Am I the only person who can sell to a given market? If so, that's fine sell all goods to market. If not, do the following Who are my competitors for a given market and will I be able to sell first? If I sell in Market A, will I still get a chance to sell to Market B when turn order returns to me? (demand for items goes down for every sale and can bottom out) Indeed, this is one strategy I'm wanting to employ sell to a given market because i he does not he might not get a chance to sell again when turn order returns to them. If I sell, should the AI go for most revenue per selling round. Currently I am looking to order all markets for a given player based upon selling ability (who can sell first) Basically an array of people who can sell for a given market based on player order. These people then sell, and we reduce the array by one and repeat the process. Whilst this solves some problems, it does not solve the bigger problem, which is the AI will just end up selling stuff in the order that of the Markets array and not specifically to the ones where it is either advatangeous to do so, or will generate them the most money. I am wondering, how do you design an AI to make coheriant, logical decisions about what when and why they would sell to a given market? Sorry for the wall of text. Many thanks


More realistic currency for spaceship battle game This is slightly related to real development but as you know hardest thing to do for developer is naming things. So now I can't figure out what specific currency to use in my spaceship battle game. Little about game Space, universe, spaceships, battles. Ships can be destroyed, damaged, repaired, aliens (multi race) typical spaceship game. Multiplayer, turn based, battles not limited to 1 vs 1 can be different count in both teams (70 vs 45). Struggle is I want more realistic currency than just credits, gold, crystals etc. Because game currency should be related to battles, repair etc. And maybe (but not mandatory for now) with context to other alien races. All options is viewed from game character perspective not player. Requirements Something to get after battle (imagine destroyed ship, what to salvage) Used to repair ship (can be as part of some kind of tool) Valuable stuff to give someone in distinct part of universe Space pirates would want to have this stuff 1. Credits (EVE, Elite Dangerous) Fictional. No context to game universe at all. 2. Crystals or other minerals (majority of games?) Game related, fictional value. This works but if we think in scope of Universe as whole for some aliens this mineral could be worth nothing. 3. Scrap metal (FTL) Game related , real value. Best option for now is scrap, scrap metal as you know "FTL" game is using. This works only if we assume all ships in all universe using metal for building spaceships. It can be used as repair material, it can be found after battle even if ship is empty. Kinda feel bad to steal this currency from FTL as I love that game ) 4. exotic currencies Using these would be interesting but need time Works great with repairing stuff information Great currency to salvage after battle from another ship, but fails to for repairing ship. more? Summary I know there is quite obvious answer but wanted to reach to others and maybe hear something I never though of. Maybe you can write your pros and cons about every currency i mentioned or point out something where to look?


Multiple image objects extracted from spritesheets or one two object for all? Let's say I want to make a 2D game and I'll use a spritesheet containing all of the animation frames and a texture atlas for static sprites such as walls, non animated decorations...etc. Should I create separate image objects for all the static sprites and for all animation rows or should I just pass the on texture atlas (or on spritesheet) coordinates for them? Which solution, or "direction" is considered elegant in game development? Thanks for the help! ) Some pseudocode Separate image objects Class StaticSprite Image texture ... public Image getImage() ... public static final CheckedWall cw new CheckedWall( checked wall grid extracted from the texture atlas ) public static final WoodWall ww new WoodWall( wood wall grid extracted from the texture... Or class StaticSprite int texX, texY, size ... public Image getImage() gives the part of the spritesheet public static final WoodWall ww new WoodWall( coordinates for the texture atlas ) Assuming that the spritesheet is accessible for all these sprite related classes.


What's an acceptable delay between a player's action and the effects of the action being visible? So, I'm creating a game where all the systems push events onto the event queue. Those events are then dispatched at the start of the next frame. This works fine, but there are some situations where the delay between a player's action and the effects of the actions can be upto 3 frames. 3 frames for a 60fps is around 50ms. Is this kind of "lag" noticeable to a player?


Engaging ways to include party members in a fast paced action RPG Imagine a dynamic action RPG, where you constantly need to use your reflex to avoid bullets and fight against hordes of enemies. What would be a best way to incorporate other team members? I can think of several ways but all have disadvantages Giving them orders manually is out of questions when there's so much going around that you need all your attention just to make sure your main is not hit by any incoming attack Using a dynamic pause like in classic cRPG such as Baldur's Gate makes the game slower and interrupts action that ideally should be quick, dynamic and engaging Making them autonomous is difficult to balance. If they're too weak or ineffective, then the player will constantly gets annoyed at them, that they can't get anything right and die constantly. If they are too efficient then they can ruin the game because player could just sit back and watch them defeat all the enemies. If they just pretend to engage the enemy to left the action to the player this can happen Most action RPGs seem aware of these difficulties and prefer to have a single character for the player to run and control. This simplify things greatly but I don't want to lose the party, for plot related purposes, banters, interactions etc. What would be a good way to have the best of both words? How can I best include side characters in a fast and dynamic gameplay?


Unusual leveling up mechanism? About player leveling up, most (or maybe all..?) RPG games are like this Kill enemies (for experience points) Level up (for more attack power) Repeat It's fun in the low levels, but later, it gets dull and boring the game becomes more like increase your numbers to see more numbers. I'm making an RPG game. I'm thinking of giving the player mini quest(s) for each level to level up. For example, to reach level 2, player must fulfill the following Gain 10 EXP points. Find an Ancient Jar. Kill a Blue Wolf with a single attack. So my question is Are there games that have done this (I haven't seen heard of any)? Is it good or bad idea? Even if there are games that have done this technique, why most (or all) RPG games are going with the kill levelup repeat process?


Programming the combat sequence in a role playing game I'm trying to write a short "game" where a player goes around and fights monsters but I have no idea how to handle the combat. For example, say I have a "Warrior" and a "Troll". How do the two fight each other? I know I can do something like Conan Warrior.new() CaveTroll Troll.new() Conan.attack(CaveTroll) CaveTroll.attack(Conan) But what part of the game controls the monster? Do I just stick the above sequence in a loop until one of them dies? Or does the game "engine" need to have a part that deals specifically with combat? Or is this an aspect of the Troll's artificial intelligence that needs to take care of it's actions? Also, who what determines the actions that the monster takes? Maybe a Troll can bash, kick, bite, cast spells, drink potions, use a magical item. Does the game engine determine what action the Troll takes or is that something the Troll class manages? Sorry I can't be more specific but I need some guidance on which direction to go with this.


How to design simple turn based combat system with multiple difficulties? I am developing a small, turn based game with spaceships. The user controlled spaceship has two modes, let's call them offense and defense mode. The user can freely switch between modes. There are three types of enemy ships. Whenever the user's ship meets one or more enemy ships, a fight calculation should take place, which can have exactly two outcomes either the user's ship wins (and does not carry away any damage), or the game is over. Encounters are kinda, but not completely random so one can expect a certain enemy and change the mode accordingly. For reference, multiple enemy encouters at once might happen, and as a rough idea, the userShip usually is expected to lose if it has to fight 2 5 enemies. Like 2 are too much, if the active fight mode is disadvantageous, whereas the userShip can win against up to four ships, if the mode is advantageous. For encounters with multiple enemy types, the numbers shall be somewhere in between. My requirements for the combat system are completely deterministic one mode must not be clearly superior to the other mode. Ideally, one mode is advantageous against a certain enemy type, while the other mode is advantageous against another enemy type (not sure what to do about the third enemy type though) must be somehow scaleable, i.e. there should be three difficulty settings which shall be taken into account. ships have three attributes Attack, Defense, Speed (however, this isn't set in stone and could be changed at will) My best idea so far assign each ship type base stats (Attack Defense Speed, floating point numbers) userShip (10 10 10) enemy 1 (5 10 15) enemy 2 (15 5 10) enemy 3 (10 15 5) create a modifier table that multiplicates the userShip baseStats with a multiplicator depending on a) userShip mode and b) enemyShip type. have the combat system compare each of the three stats (if multiple enemies involved, their combined strength), and depending on the difficulty setting, the userShip wins if the difference of at least 2 of the 3 attributes is smaller than . That way, I would have the scalability. However... I was unable to design the modifier table in a way that the modifiers actually make a noticeable difference AND the user has an incentive to switch between modes when he expects a certain enemy in the next turn. The biggest problem is the nature of the binary combat outcome. This makes it that the floating point multiplicators neglegible most of the time. Also, I feel like I have way too many parameters (fight mode, attack, defense, speed, difficulty setting, modifier) for such a simple calculation, but I cannot really remove any other than the modifier, and they all should be at least a little bit relevant for the combat outcome. Also, I'm not sure how to deal with the third ship type, as there only are two modes. If the mode does not matter at all, that's poor design I think. I could add a third mode for the userShip, however that would introduce even more parameters for the combat. Unsure about that. Any ideas how to design a combat system under these conditions?


What does it mean to develop a VR game from the ground up? Some virtual reality games are advertised as being created from the ground up for virtual reality. What does this mean exactly? What are some of the differences between developing a 3d pc game and a vr game?


Should developers make their games easier with new versions? It seems that the game Angry Birds is becoming gradually easier with new versions. Maybe so people get the illusion of progress and satisfaction of breaking new records? I would like to know if gradual small modifications of games to enhance the sense of improvement and learning by users is known common standard practice in game developing. (I don't mean to say that there is anything wrong with such a practice.)


Implementing Power Ups in a game I'm making an Arkanoid or Brick Breaker game, but I got confused when I wanted to implement power ups. The idea is that when you destroy a brick, a powerup block falls down, and if you catch it you'll get the powerup. for example Wider Paddle (change dimensions of the quad) Change ball speed (variable) Ball goes through blocks (no reflection on hittest) Shoot lasers from the paddle (change in input handling) Now I pretty much know how to affect the code to achieve these effects, however not in a clean, flexible way. I have my ie my ball and paddle hard coded in java (GameObjects), and my Levels BlockTypes in xml. One terrible way to do it is to have like a flag telling which powerup is active, and by that alter the code with loads of if statements. Could anyone help me with how this is done?


Semi procedural mission generation I want to generate missions out of more or less predefined smaller chunks. Example mission structure Mission type Rescue Travel through forest Gather intel Choice Sneak into castle (if it fails, switch to fight) Fight your way into castle Use clever disguise (if entry method available for castle and it was discovered in 2) Rescue princess The travel block is generic and could be applied to a number of different landscapes, giving different random encounters or events. Same goes for other types of blocks, the castle could be replaced with another building location, the princess could be someone else etc. As the example hints I want to do some more advanced things than just randomly link up a few mission chunks Show expected mission layout to the player before accepting it Have optional blocks or choice between different blocks Change mission layout during the mission "the princess is in another castle" add one more travel block and one enter rescue block Be able to increase variety later by adding additional objects like more location types Be able to inject special story blocks into the dynamic missions that will always happen eventually Part of the strategy element in the game is choosing which missions you accept so a lot of them will be discarded and there must be enough variation to make this choice meaningful. You might be badly equipped for forest encounters, but well equipped for sneaking into castles. And rescuing a princess is high reward so the mission could be worth taking this is the kind of decision I want the player to make. I could probably just code this together in a way that works for now, randomizing a mission type, starting with the end block and work backwards from there to the start block. There will be some dependencies, like available location types depending on terrain type or available block types depending on the overall mission type. This seems like the hard part, figuring out what needs to depend on what and where to start from. Other dependencies that come into play are Some missions types not becoming available until later in the story, easy to handle Overworld location does not have much effect on the abstract "map" generated by a mission, except that some terrain types will be more common depending on where you are Player may have access to various means of transport that will impact mainly the travel blocks Factions exist and are somewhat tied to terrain, like elves in forest If game world has a war between two faction I may want to spawn more combat missions against one or both of them depending on player allegiance So do I generate elven enemies because I generated forest terrain first or do I change around my mission generation logic to look at target factions before terrain? (just an example of the kind of compromise I need to deal with). Another model I considered but is not very keen on is having predefined fixed templates of missions to fill with blocks of appropriate types. I feel this could have me doing too much work the RNG could do for me instead and I might also have to consider template to mission type relationships. My question is basically Is there a strategy that would help me achieve this kind of mission generation in a relatively clean and maintainable way? A similar situation from your game that you can share lessons learned from? Maybe there is not a perfect solution, but there are likely more or less good ways the problem can be approached in. Game is a turn based RPG strategy game with OO design, but I don't think the details have a major impact for the concept I ask about. My object relationships are not set in stone yet. I think the dynamic mission generation is a key factor in the game and if I find a good way to deal with that I may very well adapt other parts to work well with that model.


Game numbers and meaning Each game has it's own "maximum number". One question that comes into mind every time I play a(nother) game is how are these maximums determined and how do these affect gameplay? To explain, here's some rough references from games and anime. Numbers on Levels One instance is the "level cap". In some games, it's 100 which I can easily understand to be like percentage. But other games have weird level caps. I remember Fallout (3?) having a level cap of 30. The anime Log Horizon has a level cap of 90 (and increased to 100 after "the apocalypse"). Ragnarok Online once had 99, then increased (to 120?) for Renewal servers. Numbers on Attributes Another instance is attributes (Strength, Agility, Intelligence etc.). Ragnarok Online starts you at 5 a piece and level up in small increments. Skyrim starts you at 15 25 depending on race. In the anime Sword Art Online, they have this scale of 1000. Numbers on Damage Then there's attack power. In Yu Gi Oh card game, the attack power comes in the thousands. MTG on the other hand is as small as 0 10, with the 1 6 range as very common numbers. DotA damage starts lt 100 and reach as high as 2000 on critical strikes. Exceeding caps Then there's this Skyrim mod that makes you level up in excess of the cap. Why would they make something like that? Is there something beyond the level cap that the regular game doesn't address? Is the system not enough? In summary, here's my questions How are these scales and maximums determined? Is there some magical formula or a generic guideline (like from a game)? How does these number affect overall gameplay? I mean I can have a 100 scale that does the same thing as 1000 scale or 10000 scale. But why do they opt for these numbers? Why go for smaller ones or the insanely huge ones? Why is there a level cap? And what does it mean when the level cap is broken or increased?


What are "socialist core values" or "Chinese Government Approved" for games to run in China? Noticed this recently on the Street of Rogue changelog Alpha 37 Even More Downtown Work Internal Did a bunch of work on a Chinese Government Approved Chinese version of the game Now news outlets are reporting PUBG will change for China and align with socialist core values But, in a statement from Tencent translated by Reuters, the gaming giant says that it will go a step further and alter Battlegrounds to better align with socialist core values, Chinese traditional culture and moral rules. While also mentioning It s not entirely clear what that means. and Reuters points out that Tencent s competitor NetEase has accomplished something similar by adding actual government propaganda to the game, adding red banners into its battleground ... with slogans such as safeguard national security, safeguard world peace. Steam user ytivarg asked Streets of Rogue developer Madguy ytivarg 3 Nov 4 38am So what did you have to do to make it quot Chineese Government Approved quot ? to which he replied Madguy developer 3 Nov 5 16am ytivarg I'm a little wary of getting into specifics, but it's basically some text and art that might be seen as objectionable. You can draw your own conclusions (or sift through the localization folder) So what exactly does it take to make a game quot Chinese Government Approved quot or sticking to quot socialist core values quot ?


How many achievements should I include, and of what challenge? I know this question is fairy broad and subjective, but I'm wondering if there's been any published research into what an optimal number of achievements is and what kind of challenge they should present. The game this question directly relates to is a shoot em up, but an ideal answer is fairly theoretical. If there are too few achievements, or they are not challenging, I would expect they would fail in their goal to keep people playing. If there are too many, or they are unreasonably difficult, I would expect people to quickly give up. I personally witnessed the latter happening in Starcraft 2 a section of the achievements would have you win hundreds of games against their AI opponents (boring!)


How could I give a lifespan to my MMO characters? A problem I've encountered in some MMO games, is that players congregate around the endgame content, meaning that when a new player joins they are basically playing a solo game until they reach a high enough level to join the other players. To combat that, I'm considering giving the player characters a finite lifespan. For example making it so that after X hours of gameplay, or once they reach level X, they start losing power instead of gaining it. Then they are encouraged to reincarnate, starting again from level 1 and only carrying over some small subset of their abilities. My hope is that this will make the early game content (probably randomly generated, to keep it interesting) more useful, and more busy. My questions is How could I implement this to make it appealing to the players?


How to prevent players from using save load tactics in Roguelike games? Players can achieve the expected results through continuous saving and loading in rogue like games. I am try to reduce this method as much as possible, but don't want to keep players from trial and error at all, which makes the game more difficult. Anybody could give me some advice in this respect?


Procedural sidescroller world gen algorithm by seed I'm trying to recreate a procedural side scroller world gen algorithm by using a seed and I find my self stuck trying to solve a particular problem. Seed generation applies very well with voxel like games, but it seems slightly less suitable to generate randomly placed sprites with differing widths for sidescrollers Here's a picture explaining the problem Assuming I load the game at screen 2, I'd be e.g. between coordinates 100 and 0, and the seed function would tell me that between coordinates 100 and 0 there's the sprite of a big block of mountains to render, whose center lies in the coordinate interval 0, 100 ( the center of the sprite is the pink dot in the picture) assuming I'm loading the game from coordinate 300, as is the case in screen 1, a seed function wouldn't be able to recognize the presence of a mountain sprite there, even though part of it is still visible in the interval between e.g. 250, 350 A straightforward solution would be to sample from the seed function the interval including the biggest sized object in the game, which is of course highly inefficient given many objects only cover a fraction of the screen. How is this type of problem generally solved? Are algorithms based on seeds unsuitable for this particular project? If this is the case, what could be a reasonable alternative?


Why do old platformers typically scroll to the right? Lots of old platformers are only left to right ish and they don't allow you to move viewport left. I'm interested was it just a game design choice or it's due to some limitations back then. I have a lot of possible reasons in my head, but I'm interested in actual one, so please consider reply with citation. Not sure I'm in correct community with this question, sorry in advance.


Sprites Are there any tools to scale sprites individually without using Photoshop GIMP? I am using TexturePacker as tool to pack my 2D sprites, it is good but it doesn't provide the possibility to scale individual sprites to a specific scale. I am wondering whether there is any good tool or command line to scale the files in the original folder without having to use TexturePacker. What I am trying to do is to fix some scaling errors that the illustrator that produced the files did without having to re scale fix things using Photoshop that is more time expensive.


How do I fairly distribute new powerful cards to players in a collectible card game? I'm writing a game in which users start with a few cards. They use those cards to play against other players. The winner can steal a card from the other player. The aim is to get more different rare higher powered cards. If everyone starts with 10 low powered cards, how would anyone ever get higher powered cards? They'd just be playing against people who have the same type of cards as them. How do you fairly distribute these more powerful cards among players?


Time based movement Vs Frame rate based movement? I'm new to Game programmming and SDL, and I have been following Lazyfoo's SDL tutorials. My question is related to time based motion and frame rate based motion, basically which is better or appropriate depending on situations?. Could you give me an example where each of these methods are used?. Another question I have is that, in lazyfoo's two Motion tutorials (FPS based and time based) The time based method showed a much smoother animation while the Frame rate based one was a little hiccupy, meaning you could clearly see the gap between the previous location of the dot and its current position when you compare the two programs. As beginner which method should I stick to?(all I want is smooth animations).


Multiplayer card game using PHP Ajax and mysql I am designing a map game, using PHP and MYSQL. I don't know how to make the players who sign in to the website to see other players who are also connected to the site and be able to chat with one another. I want to design the game in such a way that 2 players can play with each other and be able to send messages during the game while others groups are playing at the same time. I have designed the map game successfully, but the problem is making the player 1 who log in to site to see the player 2 who will also log in and both can get connected to play each other. http i.stack.imgur.com YyCPG.png I will appreciate your responses.


What are "affordances" in game design? I keep hearing the word "affordance" in terms of game design, most recently in the movie Indie Game Life After. I also vaguely remember it from a UX class in undergrad. But I have no idea what it means. What is an affordance in the context of game design?


Tiled game how to correct load background image? i'm a newbie. I'm trying to develop a 2d game (top down view). I would like to load a standard background, a textured ground... My "world" is big, for example 3000px X 3000px. I think it is not a good idea to load a 3000px x 3000px image and move it... So, how is the best practice ? To load a single small image (64x64) and repeat it for N times ? If yes, ok, but how i can manage the "background" movement ? Thanks Bye!


Game planning and software design? I feel that UML is not convenient In my university, they always emphasize and hype about UML design and stuff, in which I feel it is not going to work well with game structure design. Now, I just want a professional advice on how should I begin my game designing? The story is I have some skill in programming and have done many minor game such as getting some 2D platformer working to some extend. The problems that I find about my program is the poor quality design. After coding for a while, things start to break down due to poor planning (When I add new feature, it tends to make me have to recode the whole program). However, to plan everything out without a single design flaw is a bit too ideal. Therefore, any advice to how should I plan my game? How should I put it into visible pictures, so that me and my friends are able to overview the designs? I planned to start coding a game with my friend. This is going to be my first teamwork, so any professional advices would be a pleasure. Is there any other alternatives than UML? Another question is how does "prototyping" normally looks like?


Collision with User Input and Object I am curious on how to handle collision detection involving a moving target and user input. Basing myself in the mobile space, I get events from a set framework, but I do wonder about the amount of lag involved. Say the object moves faster and faster, then position of the input and the object is very important. What I want to know is what is the best design for handling user input and then also the best way to make sure to accurately work out when the input point collides with the object, keeping threads in mind?


How can I design lots of different attack types that can be combined? I'm making a top down 2D game and I want to have a lot of different attack types. I'd like to make the attacks very flexible and combine able the way The Binding of Isaac works. Here's a list of all the collectibles in the game. To find a good example, lets look at the Spoon Bender item. Spoon Bender gives Isaac the ability to shoot homing tears. If you look at the "synergies" section, you'll see it can be combined with other collectibles for interesting yet intuitive effects. For example, if it combines with The Inner Eye, it "Will enable Isaac to fire multiple homing shots at once". This makes sense, because The Inner Eye Gives Isaac a triple shot What's a good architecture to design things like this? Here's a brute force solution if not spoon bender and not the inner eye then ... if spoon bender and not the inner eye then ... if not spoon bender and the inner eye then ... if spoon bender and the inner eye then ... But that will get out of hand very fast. What's a better way to design a system like this?


How to deal with "Scrooge McDucks" in my fixed currency amount game? I'm currently working on a very small scale MMO game planned to support approximately hundred players per server, but we're having trouble with our economical model. For various reasons we have decided to go with a fixed currency amount system meaning that there is only a certain amount of "gold" that can ever exist in the game at the same time. In this early play testing version (9 players) that amount is 9000 gold but we are planing to have around 1 million gold per server (100 players). A brief example how this system works At a certain point in time this is how the gold amounts may look in the game. Max Gold Bank Shopkeeper Player A Player B 100 90 0 5 5 Player A sells 2 gold worth of loot to the Shopkeeper. The Shopkeeper has 0 gold and so he "borrows" 2 gold from the bank (only NPCs can). Player A sells 3 gold worth of loot to Player B. Player B pays from their wallet. Player A buys a sword for 5 gold from the Shopkeeper. Player A pays from their wallet. Now we have Max Gold Bank Shopkeeper Player A Player B 100 88 5 5 2 Repeat the above loot and sell step a few times and you may end up here Max Gold Bank Shopkeeper Player A Player B 100 0 27 59 14 Player A tries to sell a 30 gold item to the shopkeeper, but cannot because the Shopkeeper only has 27 gold and cannot borrow from the (now empty) bank. Player A have to lower their selling price, trade wares in return, or wait until the Shopkeeper gains money in other ways. This system is working fine for the most part. Recently one of our testers did something that completely broke our system they sold, traded, and haggled their way into owning about 60 of the total currency amount available in the game then refused to use it (becoming the RPG equivalent of Scrooge McDuck). This caused a big problem because suddenly approximately 5500 gold out of our 9000 total was unusable. Of course in the release of the game one player owning 60 of all money is unlikely, but 60 players each owning 1 of all money can cause the same effect. We have considered deleting old characters and returning their money to the "bank" but decided against it since if a player comes back and his character is deleted I would imagine they would be quite sad (especially if it was super rich!). So on to the actual question how can we avoid this happening and how can we limit the damages caused by this?


Is a responsive dimension game worth it? I'm in the process of creating a Wario Ware like game that will be created for browsers first then likely ported to mobile. Here are the different ways I've considered setting up the dimensions of the game Fixed width The natural go to, set width and height Pros Easy to manage interaction in javascript Don't have to worry about resizing As a developer I know exactly how it will look and play Cons It might not be playable on all platforms It will almost always not make the best use of all of the space on the screen Several fixed widths I'm currently leaning towards this approach Pros It can reach more platforms than having just one fixed width can The developer(s) still have full knowledge of how the end product will look through testing on each size It is fairly easy to change the javascript to match the varying set dimensions Cons It doesn't take up the full screen space on many screens Have to develop javascript in a way where it works with several sizes Semi Responsive Consistent dimension ratio, varying actual size. In my case It'd be landscape layout Pros It makes good use of more of the screen The fixed ratio makes developing easier than a non fixed ratio Cons On certain platforms it may not be playable depending on the dimensions of the game and of the device Interaction is harder to manage in javascript than set dimensions Fully Responsive I'd force landscape mode if possible and keep a minimum height and width, but other than that it's fully responsive Pros Makes use of the full screen Able to be played on any device Cons A bit harder to manage interaction in javascript My questions What approach is commonly taken when it comes to making dimensions of browser based games? Is there another approach or mix of approaches that I didn't mention that would be useful? It seems that making it fully responsive would be best, but it'd be the most work I'm also looking for any other advice on the subject Sorry if this is too broad for this community or if it is tagged inappropriately, feel free to edit as necessary


How to design AI Manager I am currently building a AI system for a game. I am familiar with State design pattern and implemented different states for each agent in my game. Different states are like Running, Attack, Idle, Cover, Support etc. In this game, I have around 10 agents which have mainly two behaviours Defender and Attacker. I made a class AIManager which have reference of all agents in the game. This class decides which agent will do what but I am facing issues in managing this class. There are many rules in the game like There will be two teams. Each team will have 2 defender and 3 attackers. Attacker will attack attackers and defenders. Defender only attack to defenders. At a time only two agents can attack a single agent. If defender is in cover, it will not go to support state. If defender is attacking, it will not go to run state. If attacker is attacking, it can run away on specific condition. ... etc To make these rules applicable, my AIManager class is totally mess, contains lots of if else, need to check every possibilities, for loops. I am sure I am not doing right in implementing these game logic because when I need to change some rules or need to add another state, I need to go through all my game logic. This manager code is totally unstable. I want to know how to tackle this situation, Is there any design pattern which I should follow or any suggestion would be of great help.


How to prevent unbalanced population in MMO game factions? In games such as World of Warcraft, the imbalance between factions is often a matter of controversy. To compensate, WoW applied the Tenacity buff to the outnumbered faction to balance PvP. However, this only applies to PvP and I wonder if this kind of bonus can be used to encourage character creation in the least populated faction. Something like an XP bonus for the least populated faction? For example, 5 XP bonus if the faction represents 45 of the server. The bonus would be highlighted when creating a character and it would be 0 when the two factions have the same size. Or a bonus on the economy by lowering auction fees proportionately to the imbalance?


(RPGs) Drop table design I guess this question pertains more to games like MMO and Diablo like games. What are the usual designs for implementing a drop table, where a monster could drop different type of items depending on a percentage? I guess the simplest way there is to have a dictionary of 'percentage weightage' to item types, but this is hard to extend if we wish to introduce new item types (for example, when D2 expansion includes runes and new class items)


how to choose the board design in a multiplayer game? I'm making a Nine Men's Morris board game in which players can play with other online players. But my problem is in steps before starting the game between two players. This is what I thought about 1 Player B requests to play with Player A 2 If player A accept the request, the game will start. I need a step in between, so that they can choose a board design, but I don't know who should choose it or how. Is there any better way in maching two players or how to select a borad map? Any ideas is much appreciated.


Looking for a market price algorithm for a turn based game I am new at game development and am now facing the problem for a market price algorithm in a turn based game. What I try to achieve the market starts with fixed bidding and asking prices for one piece of goods. To keep it simple the minimum value is 1, the maximum 20 if the user buys sells the same goods in too large quantities in a certain amount of turns, the prices should rise drop simple supply and demand logic. The maximum amount of a goods per transaction is 100 if the user doesn't trade that good for a few turns, it should adjust the price in the other direction there are certain type of goods that can be quot easily quot produced by the player and are thus sold and some that are harder to get by and are usually bought. the market can sell each good infinitely and would also buy everything, so it has no stock to take into account. What I tried and didn't work if the accumulated quantity of bought sold good reaches 500 (I use negative values for buying) the price rises or drops by 1 respectively to factor the turns into it, I thought I just reduce the accumulated value by 10 each turn and then adjust the price if it reaches 0 again. This has one big flaw, as you can easily cheat by just selling a small amount, wait a few turns and the price will rise repeat until the price reaches the maximum of 20. Any simple ideas on how to fix this? ps. I hope this is an appropriate question to ask here


How do i make turn based combat with 10 players work? I am currently developing a game with a turn based combat as focus. The games battles will need to be able to handle 1 to 20 players (Multiplayer). Each unit (Player and AI) each has an initiative (higher initiative the higher in order you are) I am now in the stage where i will start writing the game mechanics for the turn based combat and i believe the classic turn based (individual turns) will take too long especially if someone is AFK or just slow. My initial idea was to add a timer based on the number of players min capping at 10 seconds, but i don't want to stress out my players. My other idea is to allow every player and AI select their actions at the same time with a higher timer at 1 minute. When all the players has selected or the time has run out the initiative order are run for each unit with their action. I am aiming for the second one but i want to know if this is the best way to take. It will add an other dimension of strategy since each player will have to calculate what the opponent will do so they cant take action for what they have done. Do anyone know an other way to do this? What would you chose and why?


Main characteristics of a game I was doing some reading for college and I searched for "Main characteristics of games" "Main characteristics of video games" and other similar ones, the result were a bunch of psychological studies and some non totally related links. The bottom line there was no real definition. I can see why, however I m suprised there are no attempts I m going to think I m looking for the wrong thing, so can you help? My purpose is to try to understand what is a video game and what isnt. ie bad games are still games, so fun and immersion are not characteristics of a game ( before I started thinking about this I thought that was the case) Cheers


Design constraints for games that the elderly (65 ) get engaged with I'm a newbie in game design and gaming in general (Tetris, board games, this sort of things). But have observed that the elderly got very much engaged with bubble shooter and solitaires (quite different approaches). I've tried to look for something similar, and have tried to initiate some in these games, but nope, the shooter is always preferred. Does anybody know of general criteria, design constraints, or (even better) concrete examples of games that the elderly like to play, apart from these two? Note agreed, not correctly tagged, but can't find something that fit, nor can I propose new ones.


Matching game difficulty I'm currently making a matching game where the player is given a color or image type and the player has to click on all of the matching colors of images as fast as possible. My problem is how would I go about making a difficulty curve instead of just randomly generating what the next situation will be. There's a link down below to show the first version of the game I made a while ago. As you can see the new scenario is chosen randomly and one scenario can be harder than the other with no thought of progression. What I want this time is for the game to progress over time. So, the more of these "scenarios" a player does the more difficult it will get. https www.youtube.com watch?v sa2mtpv7RzA


What is the technology behind screen sharing? Came across an app called Draw N Guess(iTunes link) and the app uses screen sharing, i.e what a player draws is visible to others. I'm wondering how they are doing it in real time. I believe it is a cross platform app. I got curios to know what is the technology behind it! It must be very interesting to learn ) P.S. If this is not the site to ask plain question (i.e unrelated to programming), can you let me know where I can ask such questions? TIY!


What's it like being a game developer? I am a 6th grade student and I would like to be a video game designer. In class, we all had to choose a career that we would like to have and interview someone with that career. Finding a game designer locally has been difficult, so I thought I would try online. If some of you would take the time to answer these questions I would be grateful. Some of the questions I have for you are Why did you choose your career? What kind of education did you have to complete for this career? How is math related in this career? What would a day in your normal life in this career typically look like? How do you dress for this career? What is your favorite part about this career? What kind of games do you create? You do not have to answer all of the questions but it would be much appreciated if you would answer most of them. Thanks!


How to "hide" an adventure game in an RPG I have a shakey idea for a game, and I need help fleshing out what mechanics could make this work. I want to make a game that, on the surface, is a fun little exploration dungeon crawler rpg lite sort of game. There's some story, a large map, and basic quests to go off to various dungeons and defeat all the monsters that are threatening the kingdom. The idea is that a player can play through, and defeat the game by just going and defeating the monsters everywhere, and that should be a rewarding enough way to play the game. However, I don't want that to be the only way to play the game. What if the monsters attacking the kingdom from a nearby "dungeon" are just misunderstood, or are being provoked? What if they could instead be made into allies? For each set of set of monsters threatening the kingdom, I want the player to either be able to just go and kill them all, or find some other solution, but for killing all the monsters to be the only obvious thing to do. The idea being that finding a different solution should feel very rewarding, or a suggestion that there are other solutions should come late in the game and provide motivation for the player to replay the game. My question is What sort of game mechanics could be used to provide an alternative way of progressing through the game while not making it obvious that the alternative exists? I think if a dialog tree open up with the first monster you met in each dungeon, it would telegraph the idea that there's an alternative solution. So how could there be a dungeon of monsters that you can wade into and immediately start fighting, while at the same time there being a non violent solution?


Story dialogues user controlled or script driven? I'm currently working on the animations that present the story. Right now my animations are scripted. They allow me to dictate the pace of the scene. My dialogue bubbles expire on a simple "time per char" system or scripted time where needed. I was wondering that maybe i should let the user control the flow with a click for each major frame. This gives him the time he needs to read and process the dialogue. But that breaks the flow. For example when i want to create agitation, dialogues are really fast, barely readable etc.. Important stuff on the other hand is slow. So my question is, what would your approach and why? Generally speaking. What do users prefer in these cases? Platform is phones, scenes are presented in the same env as game engine, with characters only walking and talking.


Designing mouse aimed aircraft controls I am attempting to design mouse aimed turning to control an aircraft in a 3D environment. To cut it short, you aim where you want to go, and the aircraft turns to face that direction (similar to War Thunder). When turning an aircraft, it makes sense to use your elevator instead of your rudder (especially in long turns). If you need to turn 90 degrees left, it makes sense to roll 90 degrees left first, then use the elevator to turn, finally leveling out the aircraft once the target heading is reached. Now, I want the user to be able to control the roll, but I also want the game to do it automatically when the player is not controlling it. My problem is conceptualizing what operations I need to do to get the target roll angle. I managed to figure out that to align myself correctly, I need to align the plane that bisects the aircraft (the V plane) with the direction I want to move to (the D vector). The R angle is how much I would need to turn (in local angles) to achieve the derired orientation. So, if I the player looks at the blue circle, the plane will roll right and hold that roll until it's almost aligned with the desired direction. At that point, it will unroll and level out. Just figuring out the roll I need would be a big help. Preferably I'd like to get it done with dot and cross products, as these operations are already established and I have easy access to the up, right and forward vectors of the plane, as well as the direction vector.


Constructing a game stock market Short Question How do I calculate market values for different resources in the game? Long Question I am building a game around the concept of resource gathering and manufacturing to gain different resources. Those resources can be traded with other players or with a "game market", meaning auto generated trades that get created on a certain time interval (undecided on the interval yet). Because it would be too complex to create different exchange rates for each pair of resources (there are currently just under 100 types of resources and plans for a few hundred in total), I have come to the conclusion that there needs to be a "game currency" (lets just call it GC for now). Each resource would have its exchange rate to GC and this exchange rate would, on a certain interval, be impacted based on what is going on in the game. How would I calculate this exchange rate or market value of a certain resource every interval? I assume different things would effect it like popularity of trading within previous interval, previous exchange rate, abundance of resource currently, etc etc. But I am not sure how to apply this methodically. Update Some of my concerns are around the value of a resource Some resources can be mined directly from the environment. Other can only be obtained from manufacturing the mined resources. Other resources may be manufactured for other manufactured resources. How do I create a stable starting point to account for these factors? Obviously manufactured resources would be worth more because they are more time consuming to create. Should players be forced to observe the market value or place their trade requests at what ever value they desire? If the value is forced, what happens to trades after a market value changes? If the is opened ended, what stops players from gaming the market to boost or fall prices? Should I only calculate the value based on successful trades and consider that open request haven't been filled for a reason? How do I calculate what will happen in a large multiplayer situation when the game is only in development and I only have myself and a few AI players trading? The market values could be effected differently in different situations and I don't want to be caught in a situation where I have to change game mechanics after a game in live which could potentially upset players who have figured out the predictability of the market and over night, the rules change.


Welcoming new players to an MMO game with veteran players who have amassed lots of wealth One of the main problems in the game Knight Online has been that the servers that have been open for a long time have users with a lot of items. If I want to join as a new player, it is not logical for me to play the game in those servers because there is no way that I can catch up with the players there (unless I buy a lot of item with real money). Because, in order to obtain "good" items, you have to be in the regions of the game where you will fight with other users, so as a newbie, there is no chance that you can compete with those users. For example, there is a trend in KO a new server opens, after two years people get quite strong and almost no new user joins the server, and then those strong users just gain more and more items and sell them. Then the server dies practically, with no new blood joining it and old users eventually leaving. What is a strategy I can use in my MMO to regulate the wealth distribution, or keep it accessible to new players, even when other players have been accumulating wealth for a long time?


Touchscreen controls for a game I made a pc game recently (uni project) and now I want to put it on google market but I am having troubles changing original controls to touchscreen. The problem is that I don't really know what I can use for controls (tap, double tap, etc.) so the app is really easy to use. I will be incredibly grateful if you could share ideas for what types of controls can be used for my game. The player controls a shield, which moves around the inner circle (originally the object follows mouse cursor). The player can also shoot with the shield to destroy obstacles, so the bullet is created inside the shield and then travels in the direction the shield was facing (the bullet is created on mouse click). In the mobile version, the player controls the shield with his finger. It creates two problems the player is not able to see some of the obstacles because his hand covers some parts of the screen. Also, it means I cannot use simple tap (or at least I don't know how) for shooting, which makes the controls unintuitive. To shoot the player has to touch the screen with two fingers. It is not a common gesture, so people won't think of using it straight away unless told what to do. And the main point of my game is that there are no words at all and people are expected to understand controls without any tutorials. Also, the game relies on quick reactions, so controls cannot be complicated. Thank you!


Spell design and comunication with Player Im trying to design Spell class that can modify almost anything, Player, Units, other spells, etc. I figured out two ways of doing it, but none of this seems proper for me. Thats mainly because of Player class that got a lot of parameters and setting spell is a bit troublesome. First is Spell interface that Im adding to each class of spell, which have method execute. Pros dont have to pass a lot of parameters, just call proper function of target class of a spell To use spell just pick spell Player.GetSpell("Fireball").Execute(targets) Big flexibility Cons A LOT OF CLASSES, like 30 or more. One for each spell type Each spell need to be wrote manually Creating spell class Fireball SpellBase, ISpell public void Execute(Player caster, List lt Object gt target) caster.Mana ManaCost foreach (var o in target) if (o.GetType() typeof(Player)) var p (Player)o p.Health 10 Console.WriteLine("Player 0 recieved 10 dmg, now has 1 ", p.Name, p.Health) else if (o.GetType() typeof(Spell)) var s (Spell)o s.Cooldown 1 Console.WriteLine("Unit 0 recieved 10 dmg, now has 1 ", s.Name, s.Health) Construction spells.Add(new Fireball()) Executing spells.First().Execute(caster, enemy) Second approach Write one or few classes that can have different functionality depending on parameters set in constructor. Pros few classes loading parameters from file or data base Cons setting a lot of parameters for different classes(spells and player really dont have much common fields) One gigantic method, to handle spell execution Creating spell class Spell SpellBase public SpellData Data get set public Spell(SpellData param) Data param Construction spells.Add(new Frostball(params)) HealthMod 10 ) Executing public void CastSpell(Player caster, List lt Object gt enemy) Caster.Mana ManaCost foreach (var o in enemy) if (o.GetType() typeof(Player)) var p (Player)o p.Health spell.Data.HealthMod p.Defence spell.Data.DefenceMod and a lot of atributes and dependencies . . .......... else if (o.GetType() typeof(Spell)) var s (Unit)o s.Cooldown spell.Data.CooldownMod s.Defence spell.Data.DefenceMod and a lot of atributes . . .......... So... I need flexibility a lot. Im not saying its not possible to make it with second way but it will make one big Method with a lot of ifs, which I want to avoid, and i know that with time complexity of this will overwhelm me. Also setting parameters of all spells easily from DB would be nice. Which one approach do you suggest? Maybe change sth or even you have ideas for whole different way of doing this? Please help me ) Designin's hard... Sorry for english.


What is the design rationale for having armor and magic penetration mechanics? It seems to me that the penetration stat found in many games adds needless complexity and often is not easily understood. It is obvious to a player that if they are taking a lot of damage, then they need to get armor. An opposing player then has to decide whether or not to get an item to do more damage or an item to do armor penetration. The answer is often not obvious. The player could look up definitions and statistics on the web and not get a clear answer. They can scour forums and find several different explanations both for and against one or the other. To me this seems needlessly complex. If more damage can't scale with more armor, then shouldn't damage be buffed or armor be nerfed? Am I missing something obvious?


How might I eliminate asymmetrical gameplay caused by turn order? I'm designing a turn based game in which players profit from buying, transporting, and selling resources. Each turn, the map has to produce a certain number of resources and different locations, and resource prices have to be updated. Because of this, each round, after every player has taken their turn, the game state has to be updated resources are consumed produced, prices in each cell of the map need to be updated, etc. Originally, I was going to have a simple turn order, where each player took their turn, then the map is updated, then the cycle repeats in the same order. However, after a little bit of testing, it became clear that this gave a significant advantage to players who have their turn right after the map is updated. They're able to collect the newly produced resources before any one else has a chance to. The easiest way I could think of to balance out the gameplay for all players is to randomize the turn order after each round. While this would give everyone a fair chance, I'm worried that this might be too big of a shift away from strategy and towards luck. How might I eliminate asymmetrical gameplay caused by turn order?


How do I build games with scripted actors? The idea I have an idea for a game. A few games, actually, that can built on top of the same general design. There is a game world that the player and the other actors exist in. The player can get information from the world about his surroundings. The player can also interact with the world, picking up an object for example. Now, I would like the same thing to be possible for other, scripted actors. They are the player's competition. Instead of navigating the world and performing actions based on human input, a script should decide what they do. An example I want to do this using a 2d world eventually, so I might as well give the example I want to build There is a 2d world with objects of various sizes and shapes. Every actor has their own field of view. They get information from the world about the objects in their field of view. For the player, this information is displayed on the screen of the user. The player navigates the world by user input. Scripted actors navigate the world in a scripted way. They walk in a general direction, they follow a wall or things like that. Their scripts should be able to get the information about the objects in their field of view and act on it. If an other actor is detected in their field of view, they should walk in that direction for example. All of this should happen in pretty much real time. The information gotten from the world (showed to the player, and given to the scripted actors) in this case would be something like a collection of "what", "where", and "in what orientation". The question My question is how I can program this effectively and efficiently? I am thinking to build this with C and Lua. C is also an option. I would store the game state and display the graphics using C. The part that I don't know how to handle is the interaction between C and Lua. Not programming wise, but design wise. The interaction between the world and the scripted actors. Should C provide the Lua actors with information, and then have the Lua actors call C functions that change their direction, move a step forward, etc? Will this work in real time? I realize that this question is broad, but I think it's not unreasonable. There are obviously ways to do this and I would like to know some.


What does 'Discretizing Space' mean in the context of paper prototyping I was browsing some lecture slides by Eric Anderson for his Cornell course CS 4154 (Analytics driven Game Design). In a series of slides he mentions discretizing space as a way of paper prototyping action games. As an example he illustrates with a screen shot of Super Mario with a grid overlay (shown below). Unfortunately the slides do not expound on how this technique is used. How is discretizing space used to prototype platform games or action games generally?


Does game development have its own types of modeling? In general computer science there are modeling "languages" (read standardized diagramming techniques) such as UML 1,2, in databases there are things like ERD3, in business there are other types such as BPMN4,5. Is there anything like these that are Game Design specific?


Checkpoints in a racing game? The game would be a race from A to B through several checkpoints. I think there are two approaches for the concept of time. The game starts with some time and player has to make it to the finish before it runs out. Extra time is granted at the checkpoints. Time left at the finish is counted as a score. The time at the start is 00 00 and the stopwatch is halted at the finish. Player still has to go through checkpoints. Opinions about these? I think the option 1 is more common but I find it frustrating for beginners.


Diverse loading screen tips and who does that? Smaller games and projects have been seen to add jokes and tips that are not directly game related and in any form advice to their loading screens. For some reason I can't think of a tripple A title? Anyone else? Some people around the industry think its bad taste... I've seen arguments where companies have senseless aggression as core gameplay but get iffy about throwing harmless jokes into splash screens. It was really weird. Can you name a big game that does it?


How to start encouraging team collaboration? I am working on converting a single player game to multiplayer, but I am concerned that if I simply do a 1 1 conversion, even in modes with "multiple players" there won't be any incentive for team work. And since I have more experience with single player mechanics than multiplayer ones, I could use some advice on this. Here is what I have implemented so far points that reward team based achievements higher than single player achievements eg. single kill vs team kill a "spotting" mechanic which allows players to show their team the enemy's position on the minimap health amp ammo items which can be shared to resupply the team team based game modes such as capture the flag, TDM etc My main concern with the above, is that there is a heavy reliance on individual players to want to play in a team based way. If they don't want to, they can still lone wolf it in most cases which can have a negative effect on the rest of the team who is trying to play collaboratively. It only takes one person in a team to spoil the fun! For example, the COD series has had a number of perks, achievements and streaks designed to encourage team collaboration but I have rarely seen these used in multiplayer since a lone wolf strategy seems to be more common. Another example, the Battlefield series has had an entire class devoted to supporting team members with health packs, repairs, ammo resupplies etc and in multiplayer it is common to see this being used to fully effect. So why do such features mechanics work in one game of the same genre but not in another? I assume the type of player is relevant here, but there must be more to it than that. What are some tried and true ways to encourage team based play or collaboration? This does not necessarily mean players talking to each other, but rather working together to achieve the same goal or different parts of the same goal.


Pairing algorithm for the Elo rating system Imagine a 1 on 1 (not teams) competition between AI bots, like the Google AI Challenge. The various bots are assigned an ELO rating based on the outcome of the various versus matches. The reason I specify AI bots as they can compete 24 7 without regard for player fatigue, geolocation, etc. Given limited server resources only so many bouts can be run per day. I'm looking for a heuristic (or an optimal algorithm) to choose which two bots should compete next. All the past competitions have been tracked. By this I mean that the algorithm has more to work with than just the ELO ratings. The use cases I'm partitularly interested in The competition has been pairing randomly for while and now I want to make intelligent pairing decision. The Elo rating have stabilized and a bot is updated. The Elo ratings have stabilized and new bot is introduced to the competition. Update I need to clarify. I'm not looking for an algorithm that will provide fair matches. I'm looking for an algorithm that will find matches most likely to update the Elo ratings of the bots to their "true" ratings with the least number of matches.


Can inflation exist in a fixed price Mmorpg world? Assumptions Crafting materials are infinite. Limit is player boredom. Players can only trade through the auction house. All prices are fixed. Players cannot decide arbitrary prices. Goods in auction house stay stored for infinite duration and cannot be withdrawn by auction creator (except if he pays 100 item price 10 auction fee). Sell algorithm is FIFO (First item placed by any player is first item sold). Crafting and gathering professions have a cool down of 10 craft points per day. Questions Points to talk about All players will be happy, fair 100 prices, scam free, no need to play stock exchange market to make a profit through crafting. New Players would have the same experience even if they arrive too late to the game. Money never loses its value, you could store money in a bank, arrive after 10 years to the game and buy everything at the same price. In contrast in WOW, a simple copper ore was worth 10 silver at the game start and now has ended as 200 silver. That's 2000 inflation. By having fixed prices, you guarantee that even if all players in the universe have 99999999999g in their pocket, the goods are worth the same. So that's guaranteed 0 inflation. Hackers may cry all they want, but goods prices will never change. Why didn't WOW Diablo III used this model? They would have become billionaires with the 10 money grab technique. Btw my previous question on economy overflow was never answered, probably that site is dead. https economics.stackexchange.com questions 14609 understanding inflation in a video game


What is the term for the level progression paradigm in Bejeweled? Looking at the various level progression paradigms for my puzzle game, I decided to rule out the common ones such as 3 star per level, linear campaign like story, etc. I like the idea of Bejeweled's classic mode where the player simply keeps on going. What exactly is this paradigm called? I can't find any write ups on it so I can't quite tell what its structure is like. Is it infinite? Does the difficultly increase with each level in some shape, way or form (more likely to get "No moves")?


Parallel Storylines Underused Francise Characters One Hero Rule Video games have only one protagonist. Example in an rpg, party members are not seen in a field map, or they just follow you. Their role is "cannon fodder" tier, meaning who the hell cares if it dies. I never added it to my party anyway, following the min max gamefaq guide telling me to remove all its equipment beforehand. You end up with a video game that has only a single actor that plays 1000 tropes, in real life each person plays 5 tropes at most. This is a bug caused by a single protagonist rule, i want to eliminate this rule through smart game design. The problem is, in movies you can depict unlimited different characters and the story continuity never breaks, but in a video game leads to loss of context, can it be done? conclusion video games are an inferior mean of screenplay. In Suikoden Breath of fire 4, each chapter is devoted to a specific protagonist view, this is nice concept however it can get ankward... Loss of context You would end up progressing their individual character storylines a little bit, but since you "switched context" to another protagonist, you lost track of what the other protagonist did, you no longer remember the progression of the story. This will never work... Especially if switch happens very frequently and the battles last too long. Game Balance Extra party members do not add to battle effectiveness in suikoden by endgame you have 200 party members but they are irrelevant since random encounters use only 4 party members. It is better to keep the same cast throughout the game and become overleveled than spread xp to never used party members. Android "Pimp your money" games fixes this by adding a 30 min cooldown to each party member. This is nice, but they don't have story... Also this mechanic enforces a "play everyone a little bit", disables free choice of which party member to pick, amplifying your loss of context. Why i want this? imagine a game like kingdom hearts where each party member gets its own storyline. Questions 1) Need Story Telling Methods that avoid loss of context. 2) Need Battle Game Balance Rules.


How do I get rights to an game? I' looking to get rights to an game called Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS. I am a Nintendo 3DS Developer trying to make a remastered version for the Nintendo 3DS. How would I go about getting the rights for the game. Do I get the rights from Rockstar, Nintendo, or another party. I'm not sure.


Plot and Story design basics I have made several games but they have all been space invaders or mario style. Following my last question (thank you for all the great answers) I am trying to write out a plot line and a plan for the events that will take place. The problem I am having is that my story's tend to resemble things that already exist like films or other games I have played. The events to feel like a mix of various other games I have played. So apart form become a more creative person does anyone have any advice. Has anyone written a fairly lengthy story for a game and have pointers or does anyone know any good books on the subject. Any thoughts would be welcome, story of event ideas to. FYI the game has a final fantasy style battle system and a pokemon catch raise system.


Why have the player pick up loot manually? From a game design perspective, I was wondering what the mechanic of manually picking up items off the ground does for the player. Keep in mind that items that fall on the ground can most likely be put into one of two groups Equipment Items depending on the character the player is creating, the majority of these items might be ignored and left on the ground. Players will only pick up the ones that they want to "spend" inventory space and time (by clicking and eventually having to go back to town) on. Consumables gold, gems, crafting materials, etc which players generally always want to pick up and sometimes don't take up inventory space. While I can see that making players choose which items to pick up is an interesting "collecting" mechanic for the Equipment group, why make the "Consumable" group require manual picking up as well? Examples of games which do this (most diablo esque dungeon crawlers) Diablo 3 Path of Exile Grim Dawn Torchlight 2


When should I start designing levels? I'm working on a puzzle game. I thought of a core mechanic, implemented it, tuned it and now I have something I'm happy with. I'd really like to build a few levels before I work on stuff like UI and sound, however, I'm not sure if I should sort out some other things first Story The game has a story (as opposed to many other puzzle games). The thing is, I just have a basic idea of what it should be, nothing detailed and nothing's written down. Should I work out the story in some detail first? Figure out what arc I want to tell in the first 5 levels before I build them? Or is the story somewhat orthogonal in puzzle games and I can just go ahead and build some levels? Elements I've thought of a rather minimal set of gameplay elements, i.e. objects you can interact with, to evaluate the core mechanic. I'd really like to keep things minimal and see how far I get with just those, but is that sane? Should I think long and hard about what elements I need upfront or should I add them when I feel that something's missing in a level I'm building? Bottom line What should I do before designing the first few levels?


multi user web game with scheduled processing? I have an idea for a game which I am in the process of designing, but I am struggling to establish if the way I plan to implement it is possible. The game is a text based sports management simulation. This will require players to take certain actions through a web browser which will interact with a database adding updating and selecting. Most of the code required to be executed at this point will be fairly straightforward. The main processing will take place by applications which are scheduled to run on the server at certain times. These apps will process transactions added by the players and also perform some automatic processing based on the game date. My plan was to use an SQL server database (at last count I require about 20 tables) and VB.net for all the coding (coming from a mainframe programming background this language is the simplist for me to get to grips with). I will also need a scheduling tool on the server. Can anyone tell me if what I am planning is feasible before I dive into the actual coding stage of my project?


What are the practical differences between discrete and continuous simulations? I've done some research regarding how to simulate a game world, and it seems that I need to decide whether I want to write a continuous or a discrete simulation. From my understanding, in a continuous simulation, I simulate each entity based on the time passed from the last calculation. For example, if I have a moving entity which has the speed of N units per second and one second has passed since the last calculation, the entity will move N units. In a discrete simulation, I calculate "turns", and my entity will have a speed measured in units per turn. From what I understand, discrete simulation is not as granular as a continuous simulation, but is easier to calculate. I'm not sure that I have this right. I'm in the planning stage of a Dwarf Fortress like roguelike game and I'm not sure which method will be fine for my purposes. What are the practical differences between continuous and discrete simulations, in terms of game mechanics and playability? In relation, what are the benefits and disadvantages of each simulation, and do I have any holes in my understanding of the concepts?


First Person Shooter game agent development I would like to apply (program) the Artificial intelligence methods to create game bots for first person shooter games. Do you have any knowledge from where can I start to develop as a Linux user? Do you have a suggestion for an easy to start game for which I can develop bots easily, caring more about the result of my algorithms rather than spending a lot of time dealing with the game code? I've read some publications about the applied methods to Quake 3 (c) and Open Arena. But I couldn't find the source codes and manuals describing how to start coding( for compiling, developing ai and etc.). I appreciate your help.


How to generate "Password" to transfer data? Old Handheld games like The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Ages Seasons, Golden Sun and Golden Sun The Lost Age have the possibility to share data between games in the form of passwords. I was wondering how such a password is constructed and checked.