In a casual top down racing game, should collisions affect the car's engine? Is there a way to deter players from colliding with obstacles in a top down casual racer which keeping the game fun and lighthearted and yet make player's skill matter? Should collisions affect car engine performance in a casual racing game? If so, in what way could it be done that keeps it fun? Please use references (to other games) and examples in your answers.


How to calculate players engagement? What metrics could be used to know what certain people think about the game and how much they liked it? I would prefer parameters that don't need players to rate by themselves. Would hours of playing in a single seat be a good parameter about how much players wanted to spend time on game?


Preferred way of calculating run chances in Game of Cricket For modelling a simple game of cricket, Considering a batsman has a single attribute rating. I can go about deciding run chances by weighted probabilities. Something like if batsman.rating lt 30 map of run probability probabilites 0 0.7, 1 0.1, 2 0.1, 3 0.5, 4 0.5, 6 0 elif 30 lt batsman.rating lt 60 probabilites 0 0.7, 1 0.1, 2 0.1, 3 0.5, 4 0.5, 6 0 else probabilites 0 0.7, 1 0.1, 2 0.1, 3 0.5, 4 0.5, 6 0 Now there are two challenges What if I want finer control over batsman.rating and probabilities? How do I manage to keep the sum of all probabilities equal to 1? How to manage a second attribute to a batsman, let's say aggression. Which can lower chances of 0 and increase chances of 6? Initially tried dealing to have finer control like below map of batsman.rating probability, rating to zero chances 0 0.9, 10 0.7, 30 0.5, 60 0.3, 90 0.1 rating to one chances 0 0.9, 10 0.7, 30 0.5, 60 0.3, 90 0.1 chances of zero lt some library gt .interpolate(rating to zero chances).yvalue(batsman.rating) chances of one lt some library gt .interpolate(rating to one chances).yvalue(batsman.rating) . . . do this for each run The problem with this is that I cannot interpolate the probabilities such that they are equal to 1, Since the slope of runs for the interpolated data are different For challenge 2, Initially tried handling it by making a probability density function and shifting the mean of the curve if the aggression is more. This creates a problem when there is a 3rd or 4th attribute added (such as timing etc are added). Currently am planning to deal with a single run with its chance, rather than having to sum their probabilities to 1 like below zero chance interpolate(rating to zero chances).yvalue(batsman.rating) zero chance aggression 100 assuming aggression on 1 100 is zero scored binom( 0,1 , p zero chance).random() if is zero scored return 0 one chance interpolate(rating to one chances).yvalue(batsman.rating) one chance aggression 90 assuming aggression on 1 100 is one scored binom( 0,1 , p one chance).random() if is one scored return 1 . similarly for 2 . . Is there any neater way to do this? I am new to game development and had learned about probability distributions recently. Are there some theoretical practically established concepts I should be looking at? How do game developers handle and balance different chances of an event?


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?


What is the story of game programmers beside gaming history? Nowadays, game programming is like a big business ish, technological, academical, programming havoc. There are dozen of engines, free or not, don't reinvent the wheel dos and don't, plenty of different platform, plenty of game genres, and a lot of languages. The video game economy boomed around the 90's (I guess, with the NES etc), and just before that, I wonder how game programmers were doing their job, what languages they used, what was the equivalent of the current "dev kit", anyways what were those few guys technics and tools to achieve a working game on such tiny computer power ? I read that the playstation had only 3MB memory total besides CD swapping, how could they achieve to build an executable to hold on 2mb or ram, for complex games like Metal Gear Solid or Vagrant Story ? Since I'm young and I missed all that, I have some questions... Were game makers only or most programmers ? Why do I think a game programmer who has played a lot, has a more important role that game designers, 3D artists, because they know how a game is really made ? Since C was invented in the 70, did all programmers use it, or were they forced to use ASM to get the best optimisation ? Is being a game programmer a safe job (I mean in the job market) ? Since computers are so freaking fast today, how has the optimisation task changed ? Do we use computer console power to their maximum, or do we waste it because we can't come up with complex enough gameplay ?


For my first 3D engine, should I go for one that is already made, or minimalistic? I've been meaning to transition from 2D games to 3D games for some time, now. I have the most experience with RTS games, so I will be doing that. On one hand, there's a lightweight renderer Irrlicht. However, considering it's a renderer and not a game engine (only basic collision, etc..) , I would have to write most of the things, myself. On the other hand, there's a full blown engine like CryEngine 3, for example. Although it is mostly complete, I would first need to understand the various parts of the engine and it's implementation enough to be able to try and transform it into an RTS engine. My question is, which would be easier for me to transition to?


Design Pattern for Social Game Mission Mechanics When we want to design a mission sub system like in the The Ville or Sims Social, what kind of design pattern idea would fit the best? There may be relation between missions (first do this then this etc...) or not. What do you think sims social or the ville or any other social games is using for this? I'm looking for a best practise method to contruct a mission framework for tha game. How the well known game firms do this stuff for their large scale social facebook games? Giving missions to the players and wait players to complete them. when they finished the missions, providing a method to catch this mission complete events considering large user database by not using server side not so much to prevent high traffic resource consumption. how should i design the database and server client communication to achive this design condidering this trade off.


How can I dissuade alliances? I'm designing a game where players are able to form alliances with each other. The game has two winning conditions When all other players are eliminated, the remaining player wins or if all the teams work together to solve the problem that was set them against each other in the first place, then they all win. I'd like to encourage the single player victory, as it's more fun, but I don't want to flat out remove the cooperative victory. How would I go about discouraging players from attempting to cooperate with each other? One idea I had was to make alliances a vector for mistrust alliances might be able to steal items from each other, for example. For some small amount of context the game involves capturing territory and destroying territory belonging to other players. When a player runs out of territory they are eliminated. Cheers for any suggestions!


What makes a computer opponent feel alive? Are there any recommended blogs or whitepapers that talk about making the AI in an RPG game feel more real? (Specifically in turn based combat.) I know something must be out there, but I am only finding papers that talk about algorithms behind the AI. I am looking more along the lines of "this is what makes a computer opponent feel alive". Taking risks, going easy, retreating, etc.... So many awesome answers, and I wish I could accept several of them. Thanks everyone!


Efficient way to store entities in javascript I am trying to design a game from strach with Javascript. It's a 2D game (a kind of Zelda on old devices). I am trying to find an efficient way to store my data because I know I will have to face some major challenges among which Pathfinding collision I may have more than 1 000 entities on screen and maybe even more background objects (let's shoot for the stars !) Do you have some advices hints articles about an efficient way to store objects so that I can (for e.g.) retrieve only a reduced set of entities in my collision algorithm maybe there are some design patterns to deal with those challenges ?


How to utilize miniMax algorithm in Checkers game I am sorry...as there are too many articles about it.But I can't simple get this. I am confused in the implementation of AI. I have generated all possible moves of computer's type pieces. Now I can't decide the flow. Whether I need to start a loop for the possible moves of each piece and assign score to it.... or something else is to be done. Kindly tell me the proper flow algorithm for this. Thanks UPDATE MiniMax code Now I coded the algorithm but not getting correct moves. Please help me find out the logical error.


Comprehension question to MVC Pattern in Game Programming So is my assumption right? If I use MVC in Games I will have to implement a Model,Controller,View for every kind of interaction object. For example in an Motorbike game. My Motorbike object will have its own controller, view and model class. Or is it enough if I define a model,view and controller for the world object and just use that view for drawing my bike?! Or am I mixing something up?


How can I handle a bunch of achievements in a game? Take for example Team Fortress 2. There are a huge load of achievements, and I'm wondering how the manages all of them. And since there's a lot of achievements, I'd also like to know how it "knows" you've achieved one. Basically, how can the game handle a huge achievement system? Is there some special process? Are there hundreds and hundreds of boolean variables all over the code, waiting for certain conditions to be met, then ,Bam, achievement? If there are several approaches, what are they?


How to visually represent a time span? I am making a puzzle game. The puzzle in question needs to be solved in advance, with the final solution being given as a series of commands which will instruct an object to navigate a maze. This means I need to be able to provide all the clues necessary in advance, as pure trial and error will be tedious for the player. When it comes to rotation and distance, this is no problem. Rotation is visually obvious, and I can use regularly sized and evenly spaced blocks objects for the player to count to work out distance. However my problem is finding a similar visual representation for time. At one point, the player will ride a lift platform to 'a place', where the destination will be X seconds away. The player needs to wait this X seconds before continuing forward. How can I communicate that time delay in an interesting thought provoking way? I don't want signs next to each lift that simply state the time it will take.


Guidance for building a proper in game economy I'm seriously thinking of building a space opera game which would share some of Machiavelli The Prince aspects regarding commerce each player will be able to extract build buy sell donate a wide range of products (from ore to spaceships roughly). However, I'm struggling with the economy aspect of it. Should the game define the prices once and for all? Should each player be able to determine his own buy sell prices, and if so, how? How can I avoid over engineering this game economy mechanism, while still making it attractive for users? Edit thanks to your very nice input, some more information about the setup it's a "player only game," with no "computer managed player." players start with a planet and some resources units and then (try to) expand players can be of multiple "species" with no proper relationship apart from the one they might make up no possible notion of "central bank" or similar in the first place consequently, I would prefer "not magic" on the economy, by that I mean a standard currency whose value would be determined by the system. However then I don't see how trading would be appealing, since bartering would be the only way, which feels a bit clumsy for the players. I was thinking of having some rare metal as the standard exchange medium, but then I wonder how would to include other basic economic attributes, such as the population's wealth... Hopefully it doesn't look too daunting...


How would you code an AI engine to allow communication in any programming language? I developed a two player iPhone board game. Computer players (AI) can either be local (in the game code) or remote running on a server. In the 2nd case, both client and server code are coded in Lua. On the server the actual AI code is separate from the TCP socket code and coroutine code (which spawns a separate instance of AI for each connecting client). I want to be able to further isolate the AI code so that that part can be a module coded by anyone in their language of choice. How can I do this? What tecniques technology would enable communication between the Lua TCP socket coroutine code and the AI module?


What are the accessibility implications of requiring a button press or time out on a game over screen? For simple games, is there a de facto standard that game over screens time out after a few seconds before, or require some sort of input in order to, transition back to the main menu? Time out pros Accessibility. Mobility impaired users may have difficulty pushing the buttons so the game should advance for them. Time out cons Accessibility. Vision impaired users may have difficulty seeing any post game information displayed within the allotted time. Tweaking the time out so it's not too long as to be annoying if the user happens to game over a lot. Also quot Don't make QA mad quot Input pros Accessibility. Vision impaired users may take as long as needed to see any post game information displayed on screen. Makes time outs skippable. Input cons Accessibility. Motor impaired users may have difficulty pushing buttons. I remember reading a Microsoft article about certain best practice design decisions regarding accessibility a long time ago but can't recall the specifics.


Can and should a game design be patented? I have an idea for a game that I want to develop and I feel is unique, and I'm wondering if I should patent it. I read on the web that games can be patented, but just because it can be done doesn't mean that it makes sense to do it. I actually don't really want patent it (it's expensive, a hassle and I don't believe in patenting of ideas... unless it's something truly revolutionary). However, I'm concerned a bigger company could come along, with more experienced game designers and developers and steal the idea.


How are win conditions handled in a turn based game? Turn based games sometimes have different win conditions for different maps and mission. For example, control some structure for X turns, last X turns without losing a single soldier. They usually also have standard win conditions across all maps like eliminate all enemy units and structures, etc. How would I implement map mission specific win condition checks? My current implementation utilizes a finite state machine that loads the play state. The play state has objects and logic for gameplay. I could write custom play states for each mission, but I feel like that is not the best way to go as I would have large portions of duplicate logic and code. Ideally I would like to tie in win conditions into my map mission file data. When I load a map, the win conditions are loaded also, but am not sure how I would achieve that. Any suggestions?


How to make levels that never get old, even with a leveling system? I always get the feeling that in games with a linear plot and leveling system, players never go back to the older levels because the monsters there are too easy and the world has nothing new to offer there. Players usually don't go visit floor 1 just for memory's sake or to remember the good times they had there. In fact, they probably forget what happened there and move on like it's nothing. For some reason, this bothers me to no end. Is there a way to remedy that? I don't want the feeling of certain game areas to become obsolete to the player as the story progresses. I want my game to be dynamic and ever changing, with things to offer at every location, at every point in the player's game progress, even if one place is not at the right "level" to match with the player's current overall character levels. There should be a kind of equality, where at no point does the player tire of one place and can move freely from one place to the next. Does this sound slightly open world ish? This is not only for replayability, but also to provide a certain kind of elegance to the game. I feel like there is something lacking, and something that might be able to be improved, in RPGs, where the story is everything and so "old" levels are treated as second class citizens. I was always slightly bored when I had "conquered the world" and ran through every monster like it was spaghetti. One of the solutions I thought of is to simply update the monsters, treasure chests, items, dialogue, etc. at the old locations. Perhaps even updating the graphics would provide a visual cue that the player can have some more novel experiences there. However, isn't that essentially just changing the very nature of the location itself? The problem I have with that is that players will then forget what happened because the place itself disappeared changed. If anyone thinks of any good ideas, I would like to hear them. Thanks!


What games benefit strongly from using motion controls? A lot of games use motion controls, be it Wii, Kinect or otherwise, but for most of them, this control scheme seems forced. What are the games that benefited the most from using motion controls (as in, if they were to be controlled by a traditional controller, it would detract from the experience)? Having such examples could help one make the decision of whether those controls are beneficial for what they are developing For example, Super Mario Galaxy is a great game, but its use of shaking the remote to jump is quite arbitrary and does not add to the experience. On the other hand, Flower uses sixaxis in such a way as to make it part of a great experience. (I know this question borderlines Gaming SE, but their FAQ prohibits "Catalogues". I decided to put it on this SE, as having good examples of how to do things well is a valuable resource for anyone hoping to achieve similar greatness.)


Keeping user's attention with tycoon style games I'm developing a tycoon game, and with most games in the "genre", some in game things just take time. Making money, waiting for things to happen, etc. For mobile gaming (ios, android), how do I keep this entertaining. Without talking specifically about my game, there are day cycles things that happen at certain points (can I be more general?...) There's different possibilites, and some I've seen have either a fast forward button or something in order to not make it boring. (I'm talking about a tycoon game with a little bit of stuff to do you can't constantly be busy like sim city or something). Do I just have notifications generated at certain times to tell the user a "day is over" or a "power up is attained"? Or would that get too annoying? I'm open to any ideas on how to keep users interested, but it's really not a game that you can constantly play for hours. Not enough stuff to do, doesn't require that much micro management.


class diagrams design for an adventure game (rooms, objects, inventory)? Any links to existing design (e.g. class diagrams, database ER diagrams) for a basic adventure game i.e. that has the aspects of rooms locations (which you move between) objects which you collect use (which may have behaviours) inventory (i.e. items which you carry) rules (e.g. if you to want to open Door X, then you need Key Y)


Why would one have "waves" in each stage of a tower defense game? For example, in Plants vs Zombies, the zombies come in waves. If I recall, there's always at least two waves. The first and easier wave and then when you get 90 through the stage there's a "final wave" which is shorter, harder, and has a bunch of zombies all come at once. My question is, why would a game decide to announce when you change from one wave to the next? They could have just let the level progress from start to finish without this if they wanted to. Does this make the game more fun for some reason? Where can I learn more about this technique (eg does it have a name)?


What is balance needed between testing the game mechanic (play testing) and testing the code I do not work in the industry and I wondered very broadly what percentage is given over to play testing versus getting the bugs out. Or does no one really work it like this?


How do i get the drawing to loop automatically with out need for user input scrolling? include lt iostream gt include lt time.h gt include lt iomanip gt include lt SDL.h gt include lt stdlib.h gt include lt string.h gt include "screen.h" include "Stars.h" include "Allstars.h" int main(int argc, char argv ) seeding random number generator srand(time(NULL)) CREATING SDL WINDOW CREATING RENDERER amp TEXTURE CREATING A BUFFER Screen screen1 screen1.init() GAME LOOP UPDATING buffer with texture information Allstars allstars1 while (true) int num 0 screen1.screenClear() allstars1.updateStarPosition() Allstars class to retrieve m pstars from the Allstars class into the main function. const Stars const pStars allstars1.getStars() for (int i 0 i lt allstars1.NSTARS i ) Stars star pStars i here is where i tried to loop each star back to the bottom of the screen when they reached the top of the screen. if(num gt 3 amp amp star.m y star lt 0.97 amp amp star.m y star gt 1) star.m y star 0.99 star.m x star star.m x star each star is given a random location by giving co ordinates m x star amp m y star a random value using a function in Stars.h You can't get negative co ordinates on the screen so we map from 1,1 to 0 to SCREEN WIDTH and 0 to SCREEN HEIGHT int x (star.m x star 1) ((Screen SCREEN WIDTH) 2) int y (star.m y star 1) ((Screen SCREEN HEIGHT) 2) screen1.setPixel(x, y, 128, 0, 255) UPDATED USED TO UPDATE TEXTURE and RENDERER and PRESENT DRAWING ON SCREEN screen1.update() Check for messages and events Quitting SDL through clicking 'x' button event if (screen1.processEvents() false) break num FREEING MEMORY amp QUITTING SDL screen1.close() return 0 END OF MAIN I tried to get use a for loop to change the vertical position of the star once it draws close to the top of the window but that doesn't seem to influence the program. Stars (purple dots) seem to drift off the screen and don't appear from the bottom of the screen again. No errors occur and i have incorporated checks to prevent the stars being plotted off of the screen. Can someone help me make these purple dots loop infinitely without the need for scrolling.


Discussion about Serious Games Their lacks and forces I would like to start a little discussion about serious video games. Do you think serious games DO have their place in today's world ? What kind of serious games do you think the most interesting in term of education work tools ? I've recently read an article about the educational power of such games in early ages. Do you think serious video games could become a ubiquitous learning tool in primary school ? Any experience, title share or ideas are heightly appreciated, I want to get a feel of this question from experienced game developper that are interested of writing an answer !


How to make the button rollover by a keyboardEvent I'm designing a game calculator . My problem is how to link between the keyboard event and the button. When I click no.2 button on my Keyboard the button doesn't roolover . I want the exact button roolover wen I use the keyboard . Note every button have it's instance name ex the button of number one one mc my code is switch (event.keyCode) case 97 res 1 .appendText("1") break case 98 res 1 .appendText("2") break case 99 res 1 .appendText("3") break case 100 res 1 .appendText("4") break case 101 res 1 .appendText("5") break case 102 res 1 .appendText("6") break case 103 res 1 .appendText("7") break case 104 res 1 .appendText("8") break case 105 res 1 .appendText("9") break case 96 res 1 .appendText("0") break case 8 res 1 .replaceText(res 1 .text.length 1,res 1 .text.length,'') break


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?


What is the best way to turn image voting into a game? I'm trying to come up with a design for an image voting site that turns the (potentially boring) task of voting on thousands of images into a game. The goal is to get the user to vote on as many image pairs as possible without them getting bored. My first thought was to use to the different ip addresses of uploaded images and turn the voting into a world journey for the user. The site opens on a world map and is presented a series of image "battles" where they have to choose the winning image out of the pair. Each world region will have anywhere from 10 100 image pairs that the user will vote on. As they complete the image pairs for a region, they are "flown" to another part of the world to keep the game going. The goal of the world map approach is to collect the user's opinion on as many image pairs as possible while giving them the sense of 1 accomplishment (finishing the image pairs of a region) 2 going around the world I unfortunately ran into a subtle flaw of this approach Image pair voting will be restricted to particular region...so you can never have an image pair composed of an image from japan against an image from the US. I was wondering how I could adapt this approach to fix this flaw ie allow image pairs to be composed of images from all over the world instead of a particular region only? Or even if you could come with a different design that accomplishes the same goals (collect as many votes as possible while keeping the user motivated and not bored) Thanks for your time


An evaluation of game UI, based on certain usability criteria? Is there a resource online which has made the effort to evaluate game user interfaces and estimate their usability (by genre)? (something like what Nielsen does). In game reviews in magazines unfortunately do not always present an objective and quantifiable point, based on established heuristics or criteria


Shot em up! Vertical or Horizontal "side scrolling"? Question it s about quot Shot em up quot style game (For example Tyrian) also known as Top Down shooters. These games in the past mostly exist as top down concept, it means player object can move from the left to the right and enemies start appearing from the top of the screen and moving down to the screen. This concept was probably picked due to the monitors aspect ratios in the past where was most spreaded 4 5. Also this concept are very popular on mobile phones, because is sometimes more user friendly not using landscape mode when playing. There was a very little titles, when the concept Top Down are changed Right left It means, player object is on left screen side and moving Top and Down, and the enemies moving from right to the left. Also, there is almost no titles on desktops when current aspect ratios are mostly 16 9. Even if some new Modern Shot em up is released, mostly pick the Top Down concept. And my question is, is there any reason for that on Desktops target platform? I think for the current monitor aspect ratios 16 9 Right Left better fit the gameplay and user experience. Or Am I missing something?


Board Games Design Physical vs Digital? Is there any difference when learning the designing of a physical board game and digital board game, meaning if I watch a tutorial about a physical board game design is it applicable on a digital one? Note I'm focusing only on design process, not the art design, only on the gameplay design (rules, levels, obstacles, etc).


Beat detection and FFT I am working on a platformer game which includes music with beat detection. I am currently detecting beats by checking for when the current amplitude exceeds a historical sample. This doesn't work well with genres of music, like rock, which have a pretty steady amplitude. So I looked further and found algorithms splitting the sound into multiple bands using FFT... then I found the Cooley Tukey FFt algorithm The only problem I'm having is that I am quite new to audio and I have no idea how to use that to split the signal up into multiple signals. So my question is How do you use a FFT to split a signal into multiple bands ? Also for the guys interested, this is my algorithm in c C threshold, N size of history buffer 1024 public void PlaceBeatMarkers(float C, int N) List lt float gt instantEnergyList new List lt float gt () short samples soundData.Samples float timePerSample 1 (float)soundData.SampleRate int sampleIndex 0 int nextSamples 1024 Calculate instant energy for every 1024 samples. while (sampleIndex nextSamples lt samples.Length) float instantEnergy 0 for (int i 0 i lt nextSamples i ) instantEnergy Math.Abs((float)samples sampleIndex i ) instantEnergy nextSamples instantEnergyList.Add(instantEnergy) if(sampleIndex nextSamples gt samples.Length) nextSamples samples.Length sampleIndex 1 sampleIndex nextSamples int index N int numInBuffer index float historyBuffer 0 Fill the history buffer with n instant energy for (int i 0 i lt index i ) historyBuffer instantEnergyList i If instantEnergy samples in buffer lt instantEnergy for the next sample then add beatmarker. while (index 1 lt instantEnergyList.Count) if(instantEnergyList index 1 gt (historyBuffer numInBuffer) C) beatMarkers.Add((index 1) 1024 timePerSample) historyBuffer instantEnergyList index numInBuffer historyBuffer instantEnergyList index 1 index


How can I refactor "attack cooldown" into "attack speed"? I'm building a game where the player's character can attack bad guys and vice versa. I built this with the concept of an "attack cooldown" because I don't want units to be able to attack each other every single frame. I want there to be some delay between attacks. Here's roughly how it works if unit.ticksUntilAttack lt 0 unit.attack(target) unit.ticksUntilAttack unit.attackCooldown unit.ticksUntilAttack unit.ticksUntilAttack 1 I also have a page where I show the character's stats and list this as "Attack Cooldown". I was showing my friend and he said, "Why don't you rename that to 'Attack Speed'"? I explained that it's not really the speed at which you attack because "smaller is better". We both agreed that "attack speed" is a more standard way to show this concept and that I should change things the way he suggests. The problem for me is that "attack cooldown" is a much more intuitive way for me to program the solution. I'm wondering if there's some "trick" to refactoring the current code I've got. I'm thinking something like this if unit.attackSpeedAccumulator gt SUM NEEDED TO ATTACK a constant that's the same for every unit unit.attack(target) unit.attackSpeedAccumulator 0 unit.attackSpeedAccumulator unit.attackSpeedAccumulator unit.attackSpeed Is there a smarter way to do this?


How to design rating (leaderboard) I have a quiz online game. For each game there is a prize (number of scores). Now I have three ratings top for the last day, top for the last week, total top (based on the sum of scores). Sum is not bad, but there is an issue the more you play (even with bad results), the higher you are because more games leads to more points. I want to build a new rating, that takes in account not only sum of scores, but performance in games to. Just an average prize is not a good idea for me, because it means that winner of a single game will be higher, than a person who won 9 games and got not maximum score in the last one. Do you have any ideas experience, what formulas could be used? Thanks.


What would encourage a player to play the both the combat and building aspects of my game? I have been planning all of the features for my game idea. It is an RPG fantasy free roam game, in which the main focus of the game is on combat and adventure, though I also want to add in the ability to be a carpenter, shop keeper, brick mason, and or cook. Though this is all well thought out, another thought has cane to mind Why would anyone actually follow through with the average life style or even begin to think of living a normal life? I thought of how an experienced adventurer might "retire" and go into business for themselves, but what could be some other things that might make a player go for the worker's lifestyle?


How should I handle MMO Enemies I have some NPCS protecting a treasure room in a friendly building. But if the player comes close they turn hostile. I don't know if the NPCS should attack everyone when triggered or only attack the player that triggered them. The latter seems good but if another player could sneak behind the guards whilst they attack someone else and succeed in an easy victory. How should I tackle this issue. If I use the former a random person who didn't do anything but is peacefully looking at the situation could get attacked which isn't RP Friendly. By adding more NPCS it kills a main attacker faster however doesn't solve the latter. By adding more NPCS in the room would cause problems as it is smaller than a cubicle because of the design of the room being centred on the middle but making it larger it loses it's attention. By simply removing the guards but adding another room before the treasure room, where the guards are. This is ok to stop the first issue because not many players will enter but it will lose the curiosity of guards guarding a door but rather another door.


2D pathfinding finding smooth paths I was trying to implement a simple pathfinding, but the outcome is less satisfactory than what I intended to achieve. The thing is units in games like Starcraft 2 move in all directions whereas units in my case only move in at most 8 directions (Warcraft 1 style) as these 8 directions direct to next available nodes (they move from a tile to next neighboring tile). What should I do in order to achieve the result as in Starcraft 2? Shrink the tile size? On the picture you can see a horizontal line of rock tiles being obstacles, and the found path marked as green tiles. The red line is the path I want to achieve.


Do open world games need less backstory? I've played a few open world games and really enjoyed them, though the ones I've really enjoyed have generally received complaints about how little story there is to them. The Saboteur is one example of this. Fully open world, good enough story (for me, anyway), engaging gameplay, and still has received complaints in reviews about not having enough story. Do open world games actually need a full, all encompassing story? Or can fun and engaging gameplay fill in the gap and let the designer get away with a slightly less complete story?


Applications programmer Where to start? So far I've done web design development and applications programming and of course video games has always been one of those things that I've wanted to take a stab at but never tried outside of a few minor and failed incursions. The only notable game programming I can say I have done was a little puzzle ish game for the NES written in 6502 assembly so that doesn't exactly count for much. Basically, what would be a good jumping off point for me? I do know C and Java if that gets me anywhere.


What are the reasons to reset MMR and introduce seasons? I have a game with a ranked mode that keeps track of MMR. Players have been asking me to have "seasons" so we can reset it and help people who are "stuck in ELO hell" climb better. My thought is that people who are stuck in elo hell are just bad and that resetting per seasons are pointless, why not just climb? I'm going to add rewards for the highest rank achieved every 4 months but not reset MMR. Is there any real reason to reset MMR?


How do I convince my team to use less VO? I am a firm believer in using voice over (VO) only for necessary elements such as game narrative, and here and there to drive game play (e.g. instructions coming in over intercom, that sort of stuff). I think that game design should speak for itself, and generally, when lots of VO instructions are needed to drive game play, good design is lacking. Unfortunately, my team doesn't really consider this, and feels that everything needs to be commented on by the main character's companion. As a result, I (sound designer) got a huge script in which I had virtually no say, with in my opinion lots of useless lines. Some examples When there's only one tree in the scene with a very obvious squirrel in it. "Look at that squirrel in the tree!" In a room with one door. "I wonder what's behind that door." When facing a lot of bad guys. "Those are a lot of bad guys." I feel we're dumbing down the player, and taking away lots of attention from the actual environment and player's initiative. However, whenever I mention this to the script writer or lead director (who is partially responsible for the script to), they're quite protective about it. I feel I have to ask line by line if this is really necessary, and this is not good for the atmosphere or productivity. How can I convince my team that something more fundamental is wrong with the script? Edit Does someone have some good examples of games that use the above in a bad way, that I can use to demonstrate my point?


Player experience using a server in single player adventure to prevent cheating I'm making a game where the user can sell items he finds during the the "single player" adventure on an online, I was looking at ways to prevent any malicious user to create rare and expensive items from scratch to sell them on the net. I tried obfuscation but soon or later someone will successfully break into my code and I can't afford that, for obvious reasons. Items are stored in files, so I thought about making client add a digital signature to generated files but I have to keep the key on the client machine, so same problem if someone finds his key he can apply digital signature algorithm to generate the valid key for any file he creates. So I ended up think the only secure option was to make the single player adventure interact with the server (everyone around here tends to say this is the way to go, like this subject, in my opinion the accepted answer explains it well). But what about the user friendly aspect? My game is divided in two parts. Firstly the "real" single player adventure, where you can cheat all you want because everything is stored on your pc and server won't ever use it ( 24h), then you beat the final boss and you're notified you're able to go online to battle against other players with the stuff you acquired on the single player map. At this point of the adventure, my idea was to record everything the player is doing in singleplayer mode onto the server, so whenever he plays a tournament, his stuff is verified. I can't verify stuff just before a tournament begins because overpowered items can be obtained but are very rare, I want to systematically know if it was hardly obtained or cheated. Do you think it would be acceptable for a player to play "single player mode using internet" if he was told this will allow him later to rank up online and be The single player map will be kind of mixed with the multi player area, but maybe I can think about a feature to play totally offline but then you won't be able to use your "online items" during this time. EDIT My app might outputs txt file (representing an item) with its corresponding digital signature, so I just need a way to be sure that it's my app (and not a modified copy) that has created a given file. That's why I'm reading about Trusted computing and Memory curtaining right now, but maybe I should head to security.stackexchange?


How to communicate success failure within an abstract hint system without using sound or words I am designing a hint system for a quot game quot . The game is an interactive art simulation for multi touch and although it is rather intuitive to figure out the basics of how to run that simulation there are some more complicated things to it that I would like to help the user discover. My design rules are that it needs to be abstract and mostly transparent. There can be no sounds or words to this hint system. I am hesitant to use symbols as well. I realize this makes it quite difficult to effectively communicate with the user but that is sort of the point. It is supposed to be a bit of a puzzle so it is rewarding to solve and in this case it is completely fine if the user does not. These hints will show up when the user is close to figuring out a new aspect of the simulation. The goal of it is to communicate what the missing piece is for them to get there. For example on one of the hints I need to get the user to hold a new finger down for more than 1 second under certain conditions. In order to communicate this I want to show some sort of indicator. When the user puts their finger on the indicator it reacts communicating that that was a good choice but there is still more to do. If the user lifts their finger before 1 second I want to show some sort of quot failure animation quot however if the user lifts their finger longer than 1 second I want to show some sort of quot success animation quot . The user would also notice that the behavior of the simulation changed. I have chosen a ring circle as the core shape for the indicator. This makes sense because generally a hint appears somewhere they are not touching and they begin being quot in progress quot once their finger is on the indicator. I am good with shaders so I will make it look better later. So far the hint has been reading but I am concerned about how clear it is whether they failed or were successful at executing whatever the hint was hinting about. I have thought about having the indicator turn quot green quot for good or quot red quot for bad but the problem here is that color scheme isn't universal. AND most critically it begs the question of what a quot neutral quot color is should be for the indicator before the user has started on the hint and while they are doing it and the indicator is following their finger. Teal was my gut instinct but that color is already pretty close to green. I am worried about the use of just color and specifically the colors red green so I am looking for other ideas on how I might be able to get this indicator to communicate success or failure following the rules at the top. Are there other ways I could communicate success failure? In addition does anyone know of any other games projects that use a non verbal written hint system communicating more abstractly with colors? Would be good to have some reference. Any related articles are great too. Here is sort of a state diagram of the indicator if that helps. I have included a simple mockup of the indicator with very simple shapes but obviously to give you an idea it will look better. In the holding example the hint would start by being in the state quot hint start quot somewhere on screen and when the user touches it would transition to quot hint in progress quot . If the user releases before 1 second it would then go to quot failure quot and turn red but if the user releases after 1 second it would go to quot green quot for success.


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 ??


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 make my game more intuitive without a tutorial? i am currntly working on a mobile game app. the game details a tree with several branches on which diffrent types of birds fly and land on. every bird has a diffrent weight and the purpose of the user is to balance the weight on each side of the tree before the branches break. i attached a screen shot of the game, and i hope someone will have a suggestion on how to make the concept of the game more understandable to users without having to let them do a tutorial. second, what would be your guess about the purpose of the game when you look at the screen shot? and third, i was hoping to add a bending feature to the tree that will enable the user to save the tree by actually moving his phone but it is problematic when the design is made with pixel art any other thoughts? thank you,


Efficient existing rating system for multiplayer? I would like to add a rating for online version of a board game. In this game there are many game rooms each normally having 3 4 people. So I expect that player's rating adjustments (RA) should depends on Rating of opponents in the game room Number of players in game room and final place of a player Person gets rating increase if he plays more games and more frequently If a person leaves a game room (disconnect) before the game ends he should get punished with a high rating decrease I have found two related questions in here Developing an ELO like point system for a multiplayer gaming site Simplest most effective way to rank and measure player skill in a multi player environment? Please, let me know what would be the most appropriate existing rating model to refer.


Expiring timed actions a good idea? We have an online game where players sometimes have to wait a while (say 30 minutes) before a process they intiated completes. This encourages them to come back later. An example of this is growing crops in Farmville or basically any action in the Sims Play4Free. Now, however, there is the idea to let these processes expire, so if the player doesn't 'reap' them in time (e.g. within 4 hours) they are aborted. I'm a bit sceptical about this. How will this make players come back more often? Is not the reward of reaping the process enough for that? Can we expect players to fit their daily schedule around our game, maybe even set the alarm clock at night? Won't this just cause players to give up on starting these processes in the first place? I realise this may be too subjective for this site, so I'll end with a concrete question Do (m)any other online free to play games employ this technique?


Can Achievement systems be implemented later in development? I'm undecided if I want to implement this feature in my game at the time or not. I don't want the project to get to far out of control so I'm focusing on core mechanics first. Is this a feature that is easy to implement later assuming I data drive everything and store everything?


When is Micromanagment in games considered fun boring? Some players (typically the developer types, but not exclusively) love to control intricate aspects of a game (typically a simulation game) such as how long traffic lights take, how much to tax certain citizens (in sim city style games) when to change gear (in a racing game) exactly what an AI should do etc... But how far should a developer go to implement micromanagement, when does it stop becoming fun? It would be rather tedious to connect each building to the water, and electrical grid for example in sim city. Whereas issuing city ordinances is considered engaging to the player.


How to make a simple escape the room game? I want to make a very simple "escape the room" game. I was hoping for something that looks something like this. You would see images of some room and you click around to move or to add things to inventory. Then, you can select something in your inventory to use that item with something on the screen. During the whole game there would be a text box describing what is happening (probably in really broken English instead of Japanese). I am looking for something that can be quite simple. I would prefer to have the ability to play sound (probably mp3's) when something happens. It can be web based or a downloaded executable or .jar file. It doesn't have to be perfect, just a proof of concept really. What is the best approach to get this game working with minimal effort? Are there some libraries that can help? I have plenty of Java experience and some C , PHP, and others. I'd rather avoid Windows based technology as I primarily run Linux. I am willing to learn other languages if they have a huge advantage. Ideally, if someone could point me to an example program that I can modify. I'm not expecting to sell or distribute this game.


How to make inputing large inputs more engaging I asked this question on another exchange "Encrypted content in games" and it made me wonder about game design. The basics of that question is that you are using user input, either directly or indirectly through the current game state, to generate a decryption key which unlocks decrypts some secret content. This input would be the solution to some puzzle or come from a series of clues. The problem is that the input space has to have high entropy to prevent it from being brute forced, even by a computer. Having a series of levers would mean you need to have 90 120 or so of them. If I want a shorter input like let's 7, then you need 7500 different symbols to match those 90 levers which is way to many for people to distinguish between. So I would like to hear ideas about how you could make an engaging fun input method with high entropy. Ideally one that's visible to the user, meaning that the user is aware of it and not happening in the background. Here is one example I thought about Imagine a secret altar outside of any quest lines. In front of it are 10 slots. Any of the 500 game objects can be placed in the slots. Based on the game objects used and their permutation, a unique decryption key is generated using the object's game IDs. Then the clues to what objects to use and in what order could be cleverly hidden through the game or somewhere else. It still suffers from users possible being unable to effectively distinguishing the 500 different objects in the game. Also if your game is small and doesn't have that many objects it doesn't work.


Can and should a game design be patented? I have an idea for a game that I want to develop and I feel is unique, and I'm wondering if I should patent it. I read on the web that games can be patented, but just because it can be done doesn't mean that it makes sense to do it. I actually don't really want patent it (it's expensive, a hassle and I don't believe in patenting of ideas... unless it's something truly revolutionary). However, I'm concerned a bigger company could come along, with more experienced game designers and developers and steal the idea.


When do I copyright a game? I don't know how to copyright a video game idea. I don't know if I should make a game document and get that copyrighted first or make the game then copyright it. The main gist is.. I am lost.


Can world depth be achieved in a side scroller? I tend to build games with strong stories, which usually involves quite an indepth world environment. Typically I develope typical 2.5 over head view JRPG style (think Zelda, Final Fantasy 3, etc) because I have it stuck in my head that you can only achieve world depth using this style. This question is limited to the 2D environment. Can this be achieved in a 2D side scroller? Can a user experience the world when only seeing it from the side? Can he she explore villages in this manner? Any examples would be great. The closest thing that comes to my mind at the moment is Castle Crashers.


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.


How can I make new strategies viable? I am making a 2D platformer where the player has to reach the end of the level as fast as possible. I would like the player to be able to find new ways to reach the end of the level faster. Making multiple path is not enough, in my opinion, because the shorter one will be easily findable and the others will become useless. I thought that maybe I should add abilities to the player to increase the number of possibilites. I would like the player to be able to find strategies I have not thought about. For example players who are doing speedruns find new path and strategies to beat a game faster. I would like to help the research of new strategies. I would like to make new strategies possible even if I have not specificaly thought about them. My question is, how can I make it possible for the player to make up new strategies ?


How to desing an RPG system with regard to PVP When you design a RPG system focused on PVE, one usually goes "mob of level X has Y hp and Z damage". How about when we do PVP with multiple classes? Lets say we go Diablo, so we have STR DEX INT VIT, how do you balance those between classes? Do I say I want a fight to last 10 rounds on average (lets assume its turn based) barb starts with 300 hp, demon hunter 250 hp, wizard 200 hp And now try to manipulate DPS health using stats skills so it matches the "10 round on average" by giving mage a mana shield an a lil bit more damage per fireball than barbarians melee attack? How would You approach this?


How do I build interesting mechanics driven puzzles for my stealth game? I'm currently working on a turn by turn puzzle stealth game (as a student group project), inspired by Tiny Heist. The basic mechanic is that every time the player moves a square does a thing, every NPC moves as well. My objective is to make an experience similar to Portal the player goes from room to room, each room has an entrance and an exit, with obstacles between them. The player can see where the exit is, as well as the obstacles, and must leverage the game mechanics to bypass the obstacles and reach the exit. An example room would be There is a corridor, with a guard going back and forth. The exit is at the end of the corridor. There is a closet in the middle of the corridor. The player must exploit the guard's patrol to hide in the closet, let the guard pass him by, get out of the closet and reach the exit. I want the player to feel perplexed when they're trying to solve the puzzle ideally, I want them to feel there is a solution just within their grasp, but they can't find it and I want them to feel smart once they do solve the puzzle. The problem is, I don't know how to design puzzles to give that experience. I have a few ideas, some of which feel like they'd make fun "early game" levels, but after a while all the levels I'm sketching feel same y and boring, or too complicated with too many moving parts (I had the same problem back when I tried to design Portal 2 levels). I want to create dependencies, levels where the mechanics overlap with one another to make the player think "I need to do X, but I can't do X before I've got Y, but how do I do Y without having done X?". I could add additional mechanics like dogs, or security cameras, but I don't know how to exploit them. When I try to design a level, the kind of ideas I come up with follow a pattern of "you need to turn off the cameras to progress, but you need to give a bone to the dog to reach the camera, but you need to distract the guard to acquire the dog". These ideas are convoluted, but shallow they don't feel like they'd make for intellectually stimulating (or even difficult) levels. What methodology or design pattern can I apply to create richer problem solving opportunities for the player in this stealth game context, or in any kind of puzzle game?


Examples of 2D side scrollers that achieve open non linear feel? I'm working on a 2.5D platformer prototype that aims for an open feel while maintaining familiar core mechanics. Now, there's some obvious challenges with creating a non constricted feel in a spatially constricted environment. What I'm interested in, is examples of how game designers deal with the "here's a level, beat the bad guys puzzles to get to the next level" design that seems so natural to most platformers (eg. Mario Braid Pid Meat Boy to name a few). Some ideas for achieving openness I've come across include One obvious successful example is Terraria, which achieves openness simply through complexity and flexibility of the game system Another example that comes to mind is Cave Story. Game is non linear, offers multiple choices and side stories Mario, Rayman and some other 'classics' with a top down level selection. I actually really dislike this as it never did anything for me emotionally and just seems like a bit of a lazy way to do things. Note I've not actually had much experience with most of the 'classical' console platformers, apart from the obvious Marios Zeldas Metroids, since I've grown up on adventure games. By that I mean, it's entirely possible that I simply missed some games that solve the problem really well and are by some considered obvious 'classics'.


How should I go about randomizing levels in a "runner" game? I'm working on a runner type of game (basically it's a never ending run through hordes of enemies and platforms and whatnot). 2d platformer view. Should I random a bit of map every now and then? Few screens or 30 screens? And what about platforms and ground to make the whole thing "doable". Can I find any resources on that subject?


In a visual novel game with optional sidequests, how to encourage the sidequests without requiring them? Context I'm working on a small visual novel style game, telling the story of a defense attorney and investigator. The story is split into chapters, with each chapter being a new case, and there are also recurring characters who develop throughout the story. It's a mini Phoenix Wright style experience, with some point and click detective work mixed in. As part of the game, you can embark on optional character based sidequests, each of which focus on a different character and showcase some development between them and the protagonist. A few of these sidequests unlock after completing each case, and are usually related to the case that just happened. For example, after finishing a case involving a video game convention, you unlock an optional sidequest where you can take one of the supporting characters (the quot tough guy who's secretly a dork on the inside quot , of course) to the convention before it leaves town. I want to make these sidequests optional, and not force the player to do all of them or make them feel like they have to say quot yes quot to all of them that is, I want to establish that they're free to decline an invitation if they don't like a particular character as much as the others and would rather not take them out for ice cream. However, I still want to make sure the player does some of them, because I feel many of them, if missed, would cause the player to miss out on really neat parts of the game. (If it helps, the game doesn't have a quot completion percentage quot or anything, just small achievements for doing certain things.) My question Given this design, I have a conundrum. I want the player to do at least some of the optional sidequests, but I don't want to force it or make them feel like it's necessary to see every single one of them. I don't want to place an arbitrary quot you must do 3 sidequests to proceed quot roadblock, but I also don't want the player to skip all of them and do the entire story without developing any of the characters. That obviously defeats the point of a heavily character based visual novel! So, this is my dilemma What game mechanics in a visual novel are best to encourage optional sidequesting, but not require it for story progression or completion? I have a couple ideas for this, since a lot of games have offered solid solutions for this problem already Making the sidequests optional, but having rewards for doing them. This is the approach that most games take nowadays. You don't have to do the sidequests, but maybe if you do one, it unlocks a palette swap, an item, or a hint coin. Affinity mechanics. Maybe if you do enough sidequests for your prosecutor buddy, he gets closer to you and gives important hints in a later cases. This would work similarly to quot friendship quot in other games, where there's a number that keeps track of how good your relationships with different characters are and doing quests increases that number. At the same time, I think this encourages too much of a quot metagame quot approach, where players will just do every sidequest for a character all at once to unlock their bonus. It also makes the difficulty curve of the game wonky, since I want the cases to start easy and get progressively harder, and giving substantial bonuses in the late game might mess with that design. Requiring the player to do at least X of them. This is the roadblock approach blocking the progression of the story until the player does at least 1, 2, or 3 of the available sidequests. I dislike this because it feels like I'm being arbitrary and might frustrate the player if they don't like the current sidequest options and really want to do the next case. Ideas and other suggestions are welcome!


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?


Is it possible to use an image, sound or font without importing them externally? SDL2 It's hard to explain my question, but I will try my best. When loading sounds, images or fonts in SDL2 (with SDL image, SDL mixer, SDL ttf) you need to load them from an external source path. For example, res image.png the issue I have with this is that the user can edit this file which changes the look of the game. Is there a way in loading the asset internally? (If that's the right term?) So that it cannot be edited by other people. Thanks.


Determining Player "Forward" in VR EDIT I've removed some vagueness and replaced it with more of a description of the intended use case. I'm looking for some suggestions for ways to infer what the player's "forward" vector is in a room scale 360 experience. I'm not currently worried about extreme edge cases, especially if it sounds like the user may be intentionally not doing the intended thing, but I am interested in getting a decently accurate forward vector when they could be looking or facing any direction. I also don't care about "upness" or magnitude of the vector, so it'll end up being projected onto the (Unity's) X Z plane and normalized. I'm exploring the idea of punching as a means for locomotion. The player should move in the direction that they punch, which in itself I feel is an easy solve. The problem is, much like the problem of arm swing movement, it is very hard and unnatural to punch exactly straight forward. People tend to punch at least a little across their body. This causes the player to weave back and forth through the world, like some sort of drunken master. I don't like the idea of using the headset's forward vector either. I want the player to be able to look around while playing I feel it is an integral part of the experience to be able to look ahead one punch and plan the next move. It's also important that sensor set up and room orientation should not be taken into account. I'm looking for something that could work in a large space with 360 tracking. I've considered Grabbing an average position of the hands, getting the vector from the head to this new position. This is where I've spent most of my time, I think. I've tried a weighted average, where hand position gets more or less weight depending on distance from head. In practice, this ends up exacerbating the problem Grabbing the vector from the head to the dominant hand Dropping a raycast to the floor and using the hit geometry's forward vector Getting a complicated IK rig setup, potentially hiding the geometry, and using the rig's hip placement orientation to infer "forward" None of these quite feel right to me, although the average hand position vector feels the right est. Is this a solved problem that I'm just not searching hard enough for? Anybody else have interesting solutions to this problem? Am I being too vague and should really just seek out a solution for a much more specific use case and be happy with that?


Is there a name for this kind of mini game? (cursor moves on a bar, press key in part of the bar to win) Today I played a game which has a mini game in it, basically it looks like this here's a bar and a cursor moves back and forth on it ( cursor quot quot moves in this direction gt ) ( when the cursor reaches the end, it goes back lt ) If I hit a key when the cursor is on the specific part of the bar (which I used the quot quot sign to represent), I win. Otherwise I lose. This kind of mini game is pretty common as I've seen many variant of it in a lot of games, yet I don't know the name of it. Does it have a name? What's the origin of it? EDIT There's an answer mentions QTE. Well... I'm aware of that and I don't think this mini game belongs in that category thus I avoided using that term. Here's the reason for that QTEs have time limits, after all it's Quick time event, this kind of mini game I'm asking about usually doesn't. Well, I've seen variations of it that does count as lose if you didn't hit the key in some amount of time, it's not the main focus of it. Unlike how QTEs are all about testing player's reflex, this kind of mini game is all about precision, as seen in many rhythm games. However, it doesn't necessary have any audible cue like rhythm games do, it's all about learning the pattern speed of the moving cursor then press the key at the right time. It's not about how quick you can press a key, but when to press the key. Hence I don't think this counts as a QTE.


How do you decide when your feature list is long enough? I know a bit about this question but I find that there are quite a lot of diverse opinions on the subject? I know from a players perspective that more options is almost always good. But on the other hand if it has multi player more means higher complexity (meta game) both for the developers as well as players. On development complexity and time constraints always go hand in hand. Another would be resource and platform constraints. Possible economic ramifications of holding back for later is sometimes a reason as well. So from people experience here aside from the above when should features be cut or be for later release?


Comprehension question to MVC Pattern in Game Programming So is my assumption right? If I use MVC in Games I will have to implement a Model,Controller,View for every kind of interaction object. For example in an Motorbike game. My Motorbike object will have its own controller, view and model class. Or is it enough if I define a model,view and controller for the world object and just use that view for drawing my bike?! Or am I mixing something up?


Playing Tetris on non linear surfaces I am considering designing a Tetris game where instead of a traditional flat game board, the game will transform the board into different kinds of surfaces. I think I lack the appropriate mathematical terms to describe the behavior I'm looking for, but here is one example of the design. The board starts as a flat plane, and starts bending outwards until it forms a cylinder (at which point the entire board is not visible in one view). My question is what strategy can I use to implement the interactive graphics on non uniform surfaces? I've seen that meshes are used a lot, but how can I show this Tetris board on any random mesh? Here is an example of the transformation I am trying to make. Note that it will not be limited to curvature on a single axis.


Clay Jam continuous path tap I saw this game Clay Jam, that the user can create a path in the sand. The path is a continuous one, and it can varies from a single point to curves. How one can develop smooth and continuous paths?


How do multi platform games usually store save data? I realize this is a bit of a broad question, but I was wondering if there is a "standard" in the industry when it comes to storing save data for games (and is it different across platforms Xbox PS PC Mac Android iOS?) For example for a game like Assassin's Creed or The Walking Dead They are on multiple platforms and they usually have to save enough information about the player and their actions. Do they use something like XML files, databases, or just straight binary dumps? How much does it differ from platform to platform? I would appreciate it if someone with experience in the game industry would answer this.


Game loop alternatives for efficiency Understand where I'm coming from I've been taught that a game is implemented something like this (pseudocode) while (!win condition) waitforinput() updategraphics() etc.. exit() Is there another way to implement the "game loop" without limiting the game to finite "turns"? This while (true) business seems to eat a lot of CPU, especially for how simple a game I'm making!


How to become a Ph.D. in video game design? The title says it all, I am wondering if it is possible and if so, how it would be possible, to become a Ph.D. in video game design. I'm quite sure you can become a Ph.D. in pretty much anything, but since video games are such an informal and relatively young sector, I thought I'd ask. Thanks in advance!


Why should I separate objects from rendering? Disclamer I know what an entity system pattern is and I'm not using it. I've read a lot about separating object and rendering. About the fact that the game logic should be independent from the underlying rendering engine. That's all fine and dandy and it makes perfect sense, but it causes a lot of other pains too need for synchronization between the logic object and the rendering object (the one that keeps the state of the animation, the sprites etc) need to open the logic object to the public in order for the rendering object to read the actual state of the logic object (often leading the logic object to easily transform in a dumb getter and setter object) This doesn't sound like a good solution to me. On the other hand it's very intuitive to imagine an object as its 3d (or 2d) representation and also very easy to maintain (and possibly much more encapsulated as well). Is there a way to maintain graphic representation and game logic coupled together (avoiding synchronization issues) but abstract away the rendering engine? Or is there a way to separate game logic and rendering that doesn't cause the above drawbacks? (possibly with examples, I'm not very good at understanding abstract talks)


Adapting pen paper RPG rule system for use in a video game I want to make a browser based RPG. I am considering to use an existing pen amp paper rule system (like FATE or GURPS) instead of developing my own rule system from scratch. What pitfalls should I be aware of when adapting a pen amp paper system for use in a video game?


Connect three game Increasing level of difficulty as play progresses I'm writing a connect three type game (think Chuzzle, but without all those nasty locks, and with no big chuzzles) and I'm trying to figure out how to increase the level of difficulty as play progresses. As it stands, I've been adding an additional block colour shape type when the player advances to another multiple of num blocks 1000, and it seems to work moderately well, aside from the fact that I keep running out of new colours shapes types that look distinct enough on the screen. (currently, blocks only differ by colour, but I'm planning on adding a shaped highlight to help differentiate) I'd like to know if manipulating the probabilities of each block type based on the blocks surrounding the new block in an attempt to minimize the chances of cascades and other types of easy matches would be a good idea.


What single word could be used to describe city adventures? I am developing an urban racing simulator in a very "underground" stylized setting. It's name is The Underground King and you have the ability to either A) Race in a 2d side view. B) Do something in the city. Doing either of A or B will pass the day since it's assumed it takes all day to perform that action. My issue is that while racing levels are caled Racing, the city action adventure is called Event which is both too generic, and conflicts with my game engine's internal event systems. I have tried to find a relevant replacement that is descriptive enough on what it is, whithout relying to medieval fantasy type tropes such as "Adventure" or cyberpunk's very own "Run". What I could think of narrow down are Buisness or Biz, Happening, Venture, Risk, Encounter. Here are some examples of the kind of things you can find You accidentally bump into a drunk thug who wants to start a fight. A dog has something shiny and valuble looking in its bouth and wants to run away to bury it. A suspicious looking woman dropped a package in a trash can. You get a tip about an abandoned but heavily locked garrage. A rich businessman wants to put a bet on your next race but wants a guarantee. While driving with your crew, you smell something burning (with random consequences) Somebody is playing with matches. The engine is burning. Somebody tried to sabotage your car for the next race but it shortcircuited. A rusted part finally started spinning again. The car has higher stats now. I am looking for a single word term that can apply to any sort of event as written above which is generic enough to encompass anything you can potentially gain from, but specific enough to represent its something you can pursue or happen to you while you are present in the city. Thanks!


How to decrease velocity constantly? I am developing a golf game using the GameSalad framework for iPhone. I have one attribute named speed of type integer with value 5000. I also have one boolean attribute named speedControl which is initially false. When the ball is pressed and its sppedControl is true, I accelerate it with game.speed i.e. 5000. Now I want to decrease the speed of the ball every 0.5 seconds, so i added a timer behavior and set it to every 0.5 seconds. Every tick of the timer, I set the CHANGE ATTRIBUTE game.speed to game.speed 300. but it's not working. Sorry, I have no reputation, therefore I can't send you screenshots. Please help me. I am very new to GameSalad and this is my first project.


How to make a simple score system for my game? I'm making a simple game and I can't seem to impliment a simple score system. As the object moves 10 units forward the score should increase by 10. My issue is that when I turn the object around and move backwards the score decreases.


What is the purpose of the beginning of HL1, from the perspective of game design? At the beginning of Half Life 1, player is locked into watching an introductory film that can't be skipped and doesn't teach anything about game mechanics. Player can only move their camera around. A similar technique was applied in Deus Ex 4. Given that it's irritating not to be able to skip it on subsequent gameplays, what is the purpose of those?


Time limit on puzzle games yea or nay? Of course, it goes without saying that this can only work when the puzzle is randomly generated (say, something like minesweeper bejeweled) and not hand designed levels (such as trainyard, theseus amp the minotaur etc). I am currently thinking that this can instill a sense of urgency to the player and make them feel more challenged. Along with increasing the actual puzzle difficulty, a time restriction could be another way to increase difficulty, and the combination of both can be used as a way to give a sense of progress. Also possibly, incremental time increases when solving parts of the puzzle (like time extensions in racing games) could be used for these games. What I'm wondering about is, what's the accepted thought about using time limits? Would they work as I'm currently thinking or am I missing anything?


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.


Random Procedural vs. Previously Made Level Generation What the advantages disadvantages of using random procedural generation vs. pre made levels? There seems to be few that I can think of, other than the fact that items may be a problem to distribute in randomly generated terrain, and that the generated terrain may look weird. The downside to previously made levels is that I would need to make a level editor, though. I cannot decide what is better to use. Could answers include code examples of both procedural and premade generation, as well as the pros cons?


Text on touch in Algodoo I have just started off in Algodoo and have only a basic knowledge of how it works. I want to be able to create something that when it is touched by a ball with an English flag on, it shows England and when it is touched by a ball with an American flag, it says America. How would I do this?


Professional game design documents Possible Duplicate How should I structure a design document? I'm planning to apply for a game designer position at a big company. But the problem is, according to my CV, I'm not fit for being a game designer. (I'm a programmer). But, I don't like this and still would like to try my chances. Even though I'm a programmer, I have lots of ideas which I can put on paper in any detail depth imaginable. (It's not like "bro, I have this cool game idea in which you fly a spaceship and you see these scary monsters just like in ....", I can really make it professional). To be able to achieve this, I want to send a game design with my application, written in proper way, that will make it easy for them to accept me. Question is, what is the proper format for game design documents? Is there a template? What is the detail level? Where can I find a final game design document for a released professional game?


Scaling web game to suit any screen size I've made a simple multiplayer game, and now trying to make it fit on any screen size. I've tried stretching it out to fit the browser size, but it just appears weird and distorted. I'm also trying to avoid having borders around the edges as it doesn't look particularly nice. Is there a way to solve this that is fair to all players?


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?


Good taunt attack design I'm making a turn based rpg and I have an attack allows for a party member to draw an enemy's focus towards it for a set number of turns. I feel an attack that draws all aggression from enemies is very strong, so I am unsure how to balance it. Should taunted enemies get bonus attack stats to make up for the temporary loss of their AI and the ability to target weaker party members? Or is a party member being the focus of attacks something that should be rewarded, and the party member should be given temporary healing or defence to compensate for the risk they took?


Using the MVC pattern in games I saw a lot oft tutorials about the mvc pattern, but always it was only a small example Situation explained. There was always only one model, one controller and one view. But what if I have a lot oft models with complex logic, I cant put all the rendering code in one view and all the logic code in one controller. How I split all in smaller pieces, because the models logic depends in each other(for example collision). Know someone a good tutorial, or example game that explains this pattern in advanced games?


Game Mechanics for character development in an RPG I recently asked a question here on a different stack about how to write strong characters given the limitations of the RPG genre. After all, even in an RPG, which is somewhat story friendly, many gamers just want to get on with the game. I understand the impulse and have no desire to punish the players of my game for just wanting to play my game. The Goal I want to create a character driven ensemble cast jRPG cRPG with strong characters that the player begins to know and love. The Problem I don't want to shove story or backstory or dialogue down peoples throats when they just want to fight battles and level up and complete quests. Especially when this can get very repetitive when a player is 'stuck'. Current Solutions Skippable Dialogue and cutscenes This feature will often be used by players and can cause problems of its own. Many people will skip the important parts. Then you need to make the important bits unskippable or keep a quest log to hold their hand. Characters make predetermined choices This is the thing I can use the most. But I need to also allow the player to make some decisions too. Need might be a strong word I want. I also don't want to define my characters by a string of choices they made throughout an adventure story. Blank Canvas This is where the character is just a representation of what the player makes of them. Their dialogue, their actions, their appearance and personality are all given to them by the player, not the game designer. This doesn't work for me. I have multiple characters. Plus I don't feel strongly that I can develop a game that facilitates the player projecting themselves onto the character, and that is a different skill and style. The Question What are some game mechanics that can facilitate character development. My Writing question was how do I write within the above constraints. My question here is What other game mechanics are available to seamlessly integrate character development into my game? My question is not a dupe of How can I make my players interested in the game lore of my MMORPG?. While we have similar problems, I am working on a single player jRPG which allows for different approaches to story and character than an MMO. I am also not looking for just back story to develop character. For instance, one of the answerers to my linked writing question mentioned a characters battle cry as an opportunity to develop their personality, which is decidedly not story.


Is a Stamina Bar (ala Dark Souls) a good idea for a casual player target group? We all know the "Stamina Bar". For those who dont Its a "Bar" (usually right below your life bar) which prevents spamming the attacks as much as you want. Attacking will also reduce your stamina and you need a certain amount of stamina to use Attacks. Usually blocking , rolling and other things also require and reduce your stamina. Its a great way to balance the a real time action battle system. You can upgrade your stamina which is cool too because gives you a feeling of progress and add a little bit of fun there. Anyway The Question here is Is this "okay" for "Casuals"? I have a game which is open world ish and you can walk around and fight enemies and fight bosses too. But the game seems "too easy" now. You can basically just spam your attack button and every enemy is easy. Even the bosses. A way the fix this is the stamina bar. But wouldnt that overwhelm the casual players ?


How to update a game off a database I am currently writing a sports strategy management game (cricket) in PHP, with a MYSQL database, and I have come across one stumbling block how do I update games where neither player is online? Cricket is a game played between two players, and when they (or one of them) is online then everything is fine but what if neither player is online? This occurs when championship games are played, and these games need to happen at certain times for game reasons. At the moment I have a private web page that updates every 5 seconds, and each time it loads all games are updated but then I have the problem that when my private web page stops (for example my computer crashes or my web browser plays up) the game stops updating!


Game software design I have been working on a simple implementation of a card game in object oriented Python HTML Javascript and building on the top of Django. At this point the game is in its final stage of development but, while spotting a big issue about how I was keeping the application state (basically using a global variable), I reached the point that I'm stuck. The thing is that ignoring the design flaw, in a single threaded environment such as under the Django development server, the game works perfectly. While I tried to design classes cleanly and keep methods short I now have in front of me an issue that has been keeping me busy for the last 2 days and that countless print statements and visual debugging hasn't helped me spot. The reason I think has to do with some side effects of functions and to solve it I've been wondering if maybe refactoring the code entirely with static classes that keep no state and just passing the state around might be a good option to keep side effects under control. Or maybe trying to program it in a functional programming style (although I'm not sure Python allows for a purely functional style). I feel that now there's already too many layers that the software (which I plan to make incredibly more complex by adding non trivial features) has already become unmanageable. How would you suggest I re take control of my code base that (despite being still only at lt 1000 LOC) seems to have taken a life of its own?


Handling non automatable, repetitive, game tasks A problem I'm currently having with a project of mine is deciding how to handle repetitive, but important, in game tasks. As an example (Though there will be many other instances of this), earlier in the game, the player must smelt and shape iron without modern tools. After iron ore has been smelted, it must be shaped into tools, this requires manual labor. So how are some ways I could handle the shaping process (A repetitive, time consuming, task)? Having the player sit in a GUI until the shaping process is complete is obviously not a great idea. I don't want to make the process instant and simply rely on the speed of the smelting process to cull production, as the player could just utilize a huge number of furnaces to bypass that. For other reasons, it would be incredibly difficult and time consuming to create a short mini game for each of these situations. Is there an easy way to solve this?


Where could I look online to learn about being a game designer? I'm interested in being a video game designer but I know next to nothing about how to do what ever it is I will be doing as a game designer. Could you offer any advice of a good online area where I could learn about the basics of game designing and later on the more complicated information.


Why do most 2D platformers start off in the left and progress in the right direction? In almost all 2D platformers I've played, your avatar always starts off on the left side of the world, and continues on to the right. Is there something designers gain by doing this?


Skill vs. Luck, the ratio and its measurement Gamer buddies, is there a term to describe the level of variance in a game, in comparison to luck. The card game war would have 0 skill and 1.0 luck because the player cannot affect the game. I can't think of something that has 1.0 skill. At first I thought Spelling Bee, but the words chosen for each contestant is randomly chosen suggesting some luck involved... What ratios do different games have, and how can those ratios be accurately measured? What metrics could be used to accurately measure such a ratio? I'd also like to hear of any 1.0 skill games if anyone can think of one. To reiterate the question clearly does there exist such a measurement and if so what is it? Furthermore is there a term for the target of this measurement, so we can have a discussion using a noun. EDIT the term luck is used to describe the level of effect that chance, i.e. random events, have in affecting who the winner is. I appreciate everyone's responses.


Optimizing the economy of a resource management game I am an amateur game designer. I am designing a resource management game involving real money. This is my first time designing such a game. I explain the design and mechanics below. I need feedback from experienced game designers regarding i) The sustainability of the core economic loop of this game, ii) Concrete suggestions to de risk or fine tune it (if you can think of any) My game is about digging up treasure. Treasure is real players can cash out. The objective of the game is to make as much money as possible. Players utilize digging machines (excavators) to unearth treasure. The attributes of these digging machines are Digging prowess Most machines are mediocre diggers. I.e. they unearth small treasure. A few rare machines can dig up really big treasure. And then there are other types in between these two extremes. Scarcity Only a finite number of machines are available in this game world. Transparency Machines' visual design varies in accordance to their digging prowess. I.e. players can easily spot which machine is better than the rest. Main mechanics When a new player joins this game, they utilize real to buy one or multiple such machines. Once bought, each machine can either be Stored away (unused), or Put to work. Note that when a machine accumulates 1 hour of digging time, it unearths treasure. The amount unearthed is always proportional to the machine's digging prowess. Putting machines to work has an upside and a downside Upside Machines that are put to work unearth treasure (actual players can claim). Downside Working machines can be forcefully bought by another player (for the machine's current value 5 profit). No permission is needed. This permanently increases the value of the machine. Which means, if you want to snatch it back, you pay a further 5 increment on top of everything. Storing machines away has an upside and a downside Upside Nobody can forcefully buy them from the player. Downside They don't help the player earn anything. How do we finance the treasure finds? There is a pool of money in the back end that finances each and every treasure finding. We finance this pool in two ways The first time a digging machine is bought, 90 of the proceeds are routed to this pool (10 are pocketed by the game developer). I earlier mentioned that whenever a machine is forcefully bought, a 5 profit is paid by the buyer to the unwitting seller. We route 10 of that profit to the treasure pool, 10 to the game developer, and 80 to the unwitting seller of the machine. It would be great to get feedback from experienced game designers regarding the economic viability of the game's core loop. How do we Make it sustainable? What are the economic risks? How can they be quantified? Are there any risk minimization tactics we can bake in?


Load state continue game based on user input I'm working on a rather simple 2D game, with a pretty small set of values that will need to be preserved for a user to pick up where they left off last time they played. Rather than saving loading the state of the game for users to leave return, I'm considering something akin to what MegaMan did, where a user enters a "password" to resume from their previous state, like so How is something like this generally implemented? My two thoughts were Build list of all valid passwords and their corresponding states. Reject anything not on the list, and load the corresponding state when correct input is received. Represent the state as a binary string, and make that the password. If the user's input parses validly, assume it to be valid and set it to the state. What are the concerns with each of these approaches, and is there another way to go about this that I've overlooked? Note If this question is tagged poorly, it's because this is my first question on gamedev.stackexchange, and I'm not yet familiar with the ta


What is "convexity" in the context of game design? I have overheard game designers mentioning something called convexity in games. This seems to be a game design specific concept, different from (although possibly related to) that in geometry or game theory. Unfortunately there are very few sources online mentioning it, let alone a definition. From what I could gather, it has something to do with player choices. So what is convexity? How does it manifest in a game? What's an example of it, or the lack of it? Is it a good thing, a bad thing, or if it depends, when is it good, when is it bad?