How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy? With your typical MMORPG, players can usually farm the world for raw materials essentially forever. Monsters mineral veins etc are usually on some sort of respawn timer, so other than time there really isn't a good way to limit the amount of new currency entering the system. That really only leaves money sinks to try to take money out of the system. What are some strategies to prevent inflation of the in game currency?


Turn based battle and formula I'm building a game called DVP(Digimon Virtual Pet), and in this game other than taking care of your digimon, You can also battle and breed them. I'm working on the battle system (making it first cause the actual pet system will be easy compared to the netplay, or 39DLL)but here is the problem I don't want it to be "too" simple or "too" complicated, but I do want to go by a certain formula. There are str, def, spd, and int. Strength How hard the attacking digimon is hitting Defense How much damage your digimon can defend when being attacked Speed The chance of you missing the enemy Intelligence (battle knowledge) The chance of you hitting a critical hit or defending a critical hit. I can make a super simple turn based example, but I don't know how exactly to make the formulas for what I've explained above, any help?


When pausing an XNA Xbox game and showing a "pause menu", which controller buttons should I use? I'm making a simple 2D XNA game for Xbox 360. My game can be paused by pressing the Start button on the Xbox controller. While paused, a simple menu pops up with options like Resume and Exit to Title Screen. The way I've currently programmed it, the menu options can only be selected with the A button on the Xbox controller, but I've found that I intuitively want to press Start to resume the action again. I think it's a given that Start pauses the game and displays the pause menu, but once the pause menu is displayed, I can think of 3 options for dealing with input Menu options can be selected with the A button. Start does nothing. Menu options can be selected with the A button or the Start button. Menu options can be selected with the A button. Start resumes gameplay regardless of which menu option is selected. What's the best control scheme to pause a game and accept input on a pause screen menu? Are there any guidelines or standards to help choose between these options?


Ideas for attack damage algorithm (language irrelevant) I am working on a game and I need ideas for the damage that will be done to the enemy when your player attacks. The total amount of health that the enemy has is called enemyHealth, and has a value of 1000. You start off with a weapon that does 40 points of damage (may be changed.) The player has an attack stat that you can increase, called playerAttack. This value starts off at 1, and has a possible max value of 100 after you level it up many times and make it farther into the game. The amount of damage that the weapon does is cut and dry, and subtracts 40 points from the total 1000 points of health every time the enemy is hit. But what the playerAttack does is add to that value with a percentage. Here is the algorithm I have now. (I've taken out all of the gui, classes, etc. and given the variables very forward names) double totalDamage weaponDamage (weaponDamage (playerAttack .05)) enemyHealth (int)totalDamage This seemed to work great for the most part. So I statrted testing some values... enemyHealth ALWAYS starts at 1000 weaponDamage 50 playerAttack 30 If I set these values, the amount of damage done on the enemy is 125. Seemed like a good number, so I wanted to see what would happen if the players attack was maxed out, but with the weakest starting weapon. weaponDamage 50 playerAttack 100 the totalDamage ends up being 300, which would kill an enemy in just a few hits. Even with your attack that high, I wouldn't want the weakest weapon to be able to kill the enemy that fast. I thought about adding defense, but I feel the game will lose consistency and become unbalanced in the long run. Possibly a well designed algorithm for a weapon decrease modifier would work for lower level weapons or something like that. Just need a break from trying to figure out the best way to go about this, and maybe someone that has experience with games and keeping the leveling consistent could give me some ideas pointers.


UI Main Menu options for mobile games. What options should be listed? What do users want to see? When a user arrives at your main menu on your mobile touch phone game. What do you want them to see? What do they need to see? Start, About, Load, Leaderboards, and Settings are just a few of the options that I "could" put on the Main Menu. The question really is what "should" be there and why? My game is about surviving waves of enemies to get to the next level, with a twist of course. What options could should be shown on my Main Menu and why? EDIT UPDATE Easy recognizable PLAY button. Possible buttons include, but are not limited to Options, Stats Achievements, Leaderboards, Level Solutions, and Promote Game. Choose appropriate options for your type of game. (ie. Level Solutions good for puzzle games but not FPS) Less is more, don't clutter the Main Menu to prevent users from getting confused. Weigh the benefits of an additional button against the risks of confusing users. Symbols can be used to convey the meaning of a button, be sure to reach the largest audience possible. Have as few clicks as possible to get into the game.


What is the purpose of having lives? I think in game design it is incredibly important to ask the question why about everything, especially something that has become so standard as lives. So I am asking, what is the purpose of a game having the concept of lives? Why have lives?


Interactive ways to answer a yes or no question in a VR game? Currently, I am creating a VR game with a simple AI that at certain points ask for yes or no answers. Considering the player is free to walk around, I need a sort of spawn in and out kind of solution. I would really like this to be interactive and engaging. So far, I'm thinking to animate a "terminal" from the floor with a green and a red button on it and the user simple pushes down on one with their hand. I don't really want to use a 2D UI or a controller button press for this. Are there any other potential ways to handle this situation while keeping the interactivity there?


How to manipulate 2d image as different objects Hello Im very new to this so I don't even know what this process is called exactly. Im posting image of flappy bird here in which it consist all the objects day, night, birds, font etc Here So how to use them in 2D game? this is just example i have used. How to manipulate different objects at different coordinates ? Thanks.


1 idea, 99 execution? I keep reading in the game development community that the idea of a game is 1 and the execution of the game is 99 . Do you believe that to be true? Not necessary in those percentages.. I always thought that a great idea is invaluable and it makes a game successful even though the execution is simplistic.


What makes a good tech tree? In strategy simulation games there are often tech research trees which allow players research new abilities options, improve existing options and decease negative effects. Some games seem to follow the abc approach of item 1 gt item 2 gt item 3 with minor stat changes while others make every unlocked option wildly change the way a game is played by throwing new units into the game which are able to change the balance of the game. Some make unlocking one branch block off another for the rest of the game while other will let you research everything. Some let you research multiple things while others will penalize you for switching research before it is complete. On that note tech trees can be progressive (with dedicated research over time unlocking an item) while some need you to collect enough money points in order to unlock instantly. What are some general guidelines for when to employ what strategy in a game? What games types of games would benefit more from one tech tree type over another and why? When should a linear tech tree be employed over a branching one? Edit For example a game where the main character has to build up an organisation and research technologies in secret while others are finding them and shut them down resulting in lost research laboratories, which reduce research output. The research output should increase somewhat exponentially as the game goes on as better technology is unlocked and research laboratories are upgraded. There would presumably be a very large tech tree to explore and the constant danger of losing facilities to other parties until you either unlock some endgame tech or lose everything. Why this isn't a duplicate Some people are marking this question as a duplicate because there is a related question about tech tree size. This question has to do more with the connections, cost and relationships between the technology options (of which size is a factor but not everything).


Procedurally splitting and merging paths I'm making a text based adventure which sends the player along different paths depending on their choices. Each scene is like a node in a directed graph. Each node has a time step which is equal to the number of nodes prior 1. There is a maximum of Tn nodes per time step, say 5, and so you can visualise this in this way I want to generate paths like these. Where a node points to more than one other, that could be called a fork and where two point to one, that could be called a merge. At any particular timestep there will tend to be Tn 2 paths, only rarely going down to one or up to Tn. Does anyone have ideas or know of any similar work? (One small issue paths never cross that is, those on the left stay on the left until merging to the right. And there's no wrapping from far left to far right. Because of this, it seems like nodes on the far left or far right of a timestep will have a smaller probability of merging. Is this avoidable?)


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?


Mobile game different actions based on different tap input? I am creating a mobile game in which you can destroy blocks and interact with blocks like in Minecraft. However, the problem is, in Minecraft you destroy blocks using left mouse button click and interact using right mouse button click, but on mobile I don't have 2 buttons, only 1 the screen tap. Of course, I could create a button to toggle between 2 modes, but I am sure there is a more elegant way that would not be so annoying for players. What are the options?


How to develop ruzzle game for web I am creating a game like ruzzle but i am creating for web . Initially my basic task is to display the alphabets in the html5 canvas the letters should fetched from the database randomly in the html5 canvas tiles and when the user create the word just like in ruzzle , the new words add randomly in the html5 canvas . Should I use easeljs or any other technology . I also want to include multiplayer gaming both friends can simultaneously play the game with each other.


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 do I inform the end user about cheat codes? I have added an interface to input cheats, and of course the backend of this. Current cheats include unlimited health unlimited time faster movement no need to use keys (I have a door key system) triple firing lasers (normally there is only one) grenades (changes your weapon to grenades) How will I tell the user the cheat codes? Normally, cheats would be sold by the programmer, but this isn't that sort of game currently.


Are hidden stats a good idea? I'm thinking of and RPG, FPS or a turn based game (does not really matter), where the player does not know his character(s) exact stats. Of course they exist as random variables of normal distribution inside the game engine. So no visible HP bar, Level, ATK or DEF. You can only determine it's status by it's signs of life (good mood, fatigued, dying, dead, etc...). With regard to casting spells, when your mana is running low, your chance of failing to cast a spell increases (so there is no "zero" point when you need to find the next gas station for refill). To measure your skill you can battle with monsters which has always have fixed (but yet unknown) stats. The stats would improve as you use them, but each character would have a random talent set so some skills can be improved easier than others. So my question for the game devs and gamers, is making the true self of your character a mystery a good idea? UPDATE From the answers it seems it depends on heavily the genre of the game. For RPGs, I thought finding out what's good for your character is fun. From the responses, it seems it's not so fun because the players usually have an established play style and will try force it from their character for all costs. The actual game idea I dreamed about is manager like game somewhat similar to the Pokemon game series. The main character has several champions and wanders around the virtual world and battles with others in an arena in a HOMM like fashion. And those champions would have the hidden stats. I didn't mentioned this in the original question because I don't wanted to bias the answers around this particular game concept. For the feedback to the player (in both cases) There would be ratings similar to the elo ratings that a chess player has. One for the melee hitting, melee blocking, ranged hitting, ranged blocking abilities, and one for the magic abilities. Hitting the opponent with a sword will increase the melee hitting rating, if the enemy blocks the hit melee hitting decreases. If the opponent hit us with a sword, our melee blocking rating decrease, for successful block it increases, same for the ranged attacks. For the magic skill it's a bit tricky. High magic ability means easier to cast spells successfully, harder to be affected by cursing spells, and easier to be affected by enchanting spells. The standard abilities like hit points, toughness, strength, magic power, are estimated from the performance of the champion. These determine the actual damage dealt on successful hit. There would be "standard champions" that has a fixed and known stats, and the other champions' stats can be measured against them to bootstrap the system. So if the player tries out all aspects of his champions he can find out the skillset his champions have, if the player don't like the skillset he can trade his champions to get the ones with skillset he likes. UPDATE 2 So to get straight to point Would it be fun if I center my game around the concept of getting to know your characters champions, instead of serving all stats readily to the player? It would be similar to the football players. The coach will need to see how their players perform in various positions to assign them to position that's the best for them. So he will need to try each one as a goalkeeper, defender or forward. After several matches it will be clear which position is good for them.


is a good practice to orgnize MVC classes in diferent packages? Im,working on a project where the classes are organized by subject like gameplay, menus, utilities etc... Basically this 3 packages. is a good practice to organize classes in controller, view and module packages ? games are typically visual applications. This question is regarding the viability of a particular organization and pattern in a game application, which are mostly visually oriented.


Pleasing isometric hexagons What angles and long side short side ratios give the most aesthetically pleasing and graphically regular isometric (squashed and flat side up) hexes, that additionally resolve to whole pixel sizes for several sizes when rendered?


How to schedule 'events' inside a game? Within a game I want to schedule 'events', like a resource is running out, some storage is full, or a person is born. I see two ways of achieving this Check on all the parameters every fixed time interval. At that given time, the number of persons are adjusted, the resources are calculated... Calculate the time at which something happens and use a database to store all these events. Create a 'scheduler' which sleeps until the first event happens, and do something. However, if one piece of data changes, all the other items also changes and need to be recalculated. Is there a general approach how to solve this problem in game design? I hope my question is somewhat clear...


How can I make the "Strength" attribute more attractive to Wizard Caster classes in a RPG game? I have a game where, among many attributes, is Strength and Constitution. In Ultima Online, Strength was used for hit points. However, I would like to avoid this as Hit Points are so incredibly important, every class will want to have a lot of them in any game you play. In almost all MMORPG's and in many RPG's, players stack constitution almost as much as their primary attribute. I have a plethora of ways in which INTELLIGENCE helps a WARRIOR type. It is the problem of the attribute STRENGTH helping a WIZARD type that is giving me so much difficulty. Strength can more easily be an important statistic for Warrior and Rogue types, as they are both melee damage and players tend to love stacking high damage. However, Strength is all but useless to a Wizard who casts spells from afar, and relies on Intelligence as their damage attribute. What can I do to strength, to make it more appealing to wizard types, or any class that does not perform any melee combat? Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not feel as though Spells Magic should be more powerful because someone has more physical muscles and capacity to lift more. It makes sense to give Magic more power if the caster had a lot of fortitude or a overall healthy body, but that is already defined as Constitution. I want to make Strength as attractive as Intelligence, to Wizard types than in stereotypical RPG's. I was able to find balance between a "Dumb Brute Warrior" vs "Intelligent Warrior". How can I find a balance between a "Buff Conan Wizard" vs "Intelligent but Frail Wizard" without introducing melee combat? Adding unique gameplay features or altering the traditional RPG style of play is more than welcome.


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)?


How to map changing stances (southpaw orthodox) to gamepad controls? I am developing a third person hack n slash style game which features a variety of melee and projectile weapons as well as unarmed combat. The player will be able to dual wield any combination of the above weapons eg. a sword and a pistol, or a knife and a bare fist. I'm trying to work out the gamepad controls based on the game mechanics, but I've come to a dilemma regarding the movesets. Originally I had the left and right triggers mapped as the left and right hand attacks. However, some of the attack moves that I have planned involve the player taking a step forward. Meaning they may have started in orthodox stance (left foot forward) but will end up in southpaw (right foot forward). For some weapons like firearms the stance makes no difference, since the attacks will be the same from either. But for some melee weapons and especially for unarmed combat this is a significant difference. For example, from orthodox stance the left trigger should logically do a jab attack from the front hand, while the right trigger should do a straight punch attack from the back hand. If the player now does a lunging attack in which they take a step forward, they end up with their other foot infront, meaning that now the left trigger cannot do a jab but must perform a straight punch since the left hand is no longer in front. So the question is how to resolve this without having a controls system that confuses the player. There are a few options I have considered after studying other games, but I am looking to see if a better alternatives exists. 1) Seen in Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, Tekken Use 2 attack buttons but have the player always stay in a single stance. This way they the left and right limbs will always perform the same move. The downside of this is that attacks which would normally leave the player in another stance have to either be avoided or the animation has to include the player returning to their original stance. While this solves the problem it can look unrealistic. 2) Seen in DOA, VF Use only 1 attack button, instead of one for each limb. This will mean that the stance of the player is irrelevant since a single button will play the correct attack animation of either the left limb or right limb depending on the stance. While this is more realistic it makes it difficult to have dual wielding weapons with only one button controlling both. For example, consider if a pistol and sword are being dual wielded, the left trigger may swing the sword while the right trigger may fire the pistol but if both weapons are mapped to only the right trigger what attack should happen? The sword, the pistol, both? Here lies the problem. 3) Seen in MK Use 2 attack buttons which refer to the front or back limb, not the left or right limb. This method allows for the player to switch stances, since for example the left trigger may refer to the front hand irrespective of which stance the player is in. In a side scrolling game this may not be a problem, but in a third person game where the camera is behind the player, I am concerned that this type of controls will be confusing. Especially since the convention (correct me if I'm wrong) for dual wielding seems to be that the left and right triggers control the left and right weapons limbs. So are these the only options, or is there a better way of mapping the controls for this use case?


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.


How to make difficulty progression in my endless runner game? I want to further develop this game I created for a game jam. Currently spiders chase squirrels with the same speed. Tree branches are randomly generated. Even if you perfectly time your jumps the spiders will eventually catch you. Squirrels are able to pick up randomly generated acorns to throw at the spiders knocking them back. I want to implement some kind of difficulty progression. Any ideas are appreciated. My main idea is to accelerate the spiders, but the squirrels can't jump any quicker because of physics. They are propelled by one of two jump strengths, and gravity. The question is Would it be a good idea to increase the jump high and or gravity accordingly to the speed of the spiders? (allowing the player to continue to evade the spiders) Please take into consideration that other obstacles will be added for example a bat attacking the squirrel from a hole in the tree trunk.


stats or profit give away result of game Think of a coinflip game, whose logic looks as follows Server sends websocket message (RESULT MESSAGE) to frontend with result of a game (won lost) Server sends websocket message to frontend with updated aggregated stats (STATS MESSAGE) (think all time profit after the new coin flip, or updated all time stats) Frontend reacts to RESULT MESSAGE by playing an animation (coin flipping). It also updates the all time stats and profit in response to STATS MESSAGE The problem with this logic is, responding to STATS MESSAGE (updating profit and stats) gives away the result of the coin flip before the animation finishes. Solutions I cannot use Merging RESULT MESSAGE and STATS MESSAGE together, and only updating the stats profit after animation finishes. Because those 2 messages are produced and sent by different services. Linking a particular RESULT MESSAGE to a STATS MESSAGE and only reacting to a STATS MESSAGE when its corresponding RESULT MESSAGE has been processed and its animation completed. Because in reality I have several kinds of STATS MESSAGES (trophies updated, stats updated, profit balance updated, etc), and it's just not practical for the frontend to hold onto all those messages until their respective RESULT MESSAGE is processed Solutions I've tried successfully before, but I'm trying to avoid Having the backend send STATS MESSAGE with a delay, to make sure it doesn't reach the frontend before the coinflip animation has finished. This sort of encodes frontend behavior (animation) on the backend. All ideas and suggestions appreciated. Thanks a lot! EDIT I made the coin flipping example for simplicity, but it's not precisely con flipping. It's a multiplayer game where dozens of games animations per user per seconds are going on. So queuing a bunch of stuff on the frontend might be less than ideal (I'm still looking into performant versions of this solution though). Pulling the STATS data via an API call when the animation finishes (instead of using websockets data) is another alternative that I've considered, but for the same reason described above it might not be feasible (dozens of API calls per user per second). Plus there's a chance that an API call is triggered by game 1 finishing, but while game 2 animation is still going on, giving away the result of game 2


How to make something happen every N seconds in game? I want to have something happen every N seconds, how would I do that? Maybe use a timer but how?


Game Programming Junior Demo Design Consider the following demo http www.ashereinhorn.com post 11140243390 short capture from the last xna version direct3d (It has now almost been converted to C and DirecX10, and so the code is not important here, it's the substance I'm interested in) Basically the little agents move around killing each other, their states are displayed in a corner and you can select one so as to see the items it can see, it's field of view and the things it is holding in memory. I showed it to someone that works in the industry and they said I should focus on tracking a single agent and make what's going on more clear so maybe animate each state with simple animations or model swapping to make it more obvious when they are searching in combat running away. The other thing they said I should change was the fact that the agents simply disappear when killed, and reappear when spawned because again, it's not clear what's happeneing. As a result I'm going to implement a simple particle system so that agents 'shatter' when killed and possibly reassemble when spawned. My question is, are there any really obvious changes that I should make to this demo with a view to getting my first game programming job? If you work or know about the industry, is there anything that jumps out at you that should be included? Or is bad? or good for that matter? Are there any things that would particularly impress or grab your attention in a game demo? Thank you very much for any help you can give! EDIT The walls are actually solid in the C version


How to manipulate browser pixels on different mobile devices I'm creating a board game using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. It's working fine on Desktop browsers properly. But when i load it on Windows phone it's not behaving properly. The resolutions and the game board are not matching. I'm targeting Windows and Android platform. Game Board is 1050x650 px which is implemented using HTML and css3. now what i want to know is most browsers don't support certain CSS3 features like rotations and key frames animations so will it be better if i use photoshop to make the board for different resolutions or is it possible to do the same as i did using HTML5 and CSS3. And in the above image, let's say distance between B and a red dot is 200px and i use JS to manipulate the movement of B from one point(red dot) to another point(red dot), now will the distance 200px be the same in all the devices? If not how to write a proper code to manipulate the movement in all mobile devices?


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?


What type of document for game design? What type of support format do you use to store and diffuse your game design documentation? Wiki? Doc files? Files in Repository? Shared folder? Google Doc? Please provide pros and cons for each one.


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?


When do you give in game advice? I'm interested in the process of automatically generating advice when a player is consistently struggling through parts of a game. Suppose I already know what advice I want to generate (e.g., "Press A twice to double jump across long gaps"). My question is twofold Has it been shown that this intervention can be useful to gamer experience? Has it been shown that excessive intervention will be ignored or will cause frustration? References to game design or psychology research papers is a plus!


Is there a purpose behind the tediousness of most MMO RPGs? As most of you probably know a lot, if not all, MMO RPG games have some element of "tediousness" in them. By "tediousness" I mean elements in the gameplay that feel both unpleasant and needlessly complicated or long (note that grinding is simply unpleasant and therefore I do not include it in this question). For example introductory quests. I don't mean the idea of introductory quests, which I think good. I mean their implementation. For example in some games, where you can have several characters per account, each time you create a new character you have to go though the same introduction. You are not offered the option to skip it, regardless that you might already have a high leveled character. Surely there must a point to this? For another example in some games the introduction is needlessly long. It could take an average player a few days to get past it, it doesn't add anything storywise and the game concepts have long been explained by the time the player reaches even half. What is the rationale behind putting the player through all this, instead of giving him the option to skip the intro and or making it only as long as it needs to be, etc.?


Styles of games that work at low resolution I'm taking a class on compilers, and the goal is to write a compiler for Meggy Jr devices (Arduino). The goal is just to make a simple compilers with loops and variables and stuff. Obviously, that's lame, so the "real goal" is to make an impressive game on the device. The problem is that it only has 64 pixels to work with (technically 72, but the top 8 are single color and not part of the main display, so they're really only useful for displaying things like money). My problem is thinking of something to do on a device that small. It doesn't really matter if it's original, but it can't be something that's already available. My first idea was "snake", but that comes with the SDK. Same with a side scrolling shooter. Remaining ideas include a tower defense game (hard to write, hard to control), an RPG (same), tetris (lame).. The problem is that all of the games I like require a high resolution screen because they have a lot of text. Even a really simple game like nethack would be hard because each creature would be a single color. tl dr What styles of games require a. No text and b. Few enough objects that representing them each with a single color is acceptable? EDIT To clarify, the display is 8x8 for a total of 64 pixels, not 64x64.


How to make an object towards the mouse on one Axis Gamemaker Studio 2 I am trying to have my "obj playership" move towards the Cursor on a single Axis. Prefer it to be the Vertical Axis. I tried doing this is an "Execute Code Box" in a step event "direction mouse x" "speed 1 " but the movement looks weird and does not do what I am trying to do. To better refine my question I'm trying to have my "obj playership" move just up and down in relation to the mouse, so if I'm moving my mouse up or down the obj playership" will follow towards the mouse either up or down.


Patterns on preserving players progress across all player's devices I'm writing cross platform game that is requested to store player progress across all their devices. I'm not talking about implementation details, but overall picture What are the patterns for preserving player progress in the least intrusive distruptive way? Logging in requires players to make account or share their facebook gmail address It is strong entry obstacle when someone wants "just to try the thing up" I can make account for player after they played a bit... This way, the user already tried the game and if he like to have his progress saved, they can make an account now. If not the progress will be saved only locally I can experiment with some information taken directly from device (when playing from mobile, for example) I believe I can easily access their gmail on Android, and use it for account merging later on I can give them codes that unlock their progress. They can type them on different machines They can manually move save file I don't need to keep it online They can move save file via cloud provider (like Dropbox Skybox GoogleDrive) Anything else...?


How can I find the valid words in a grid of characters? I am creating a game similar to Tetris, with two main differences the screen already begins filled with tiles (like in Puzzle Quest for Nintendo DS and PC) and each individual tile has a letter in it. The player's objective is to eliminate tiles by forming valid words with them. Words are formed by placing letters next to each other, in any direction, except diagonally. The player can move an entire row of tiles to the left or to the right or an entire column of tiles up or down, for as many spaces as he desires (if the movement of a row column surpasses the limits of the board, the letter that crosses the limit will "cycle", appearing at the other end of the row column). After the player's action, the game should check the entire board to look for valid words and remove the letters that form those words from the board. The letters above those that were removed will fall down in the place of those letters that were removed and new letters will drop from the top of the screen until the board is filled up again. I have already written a linear algorithm that, given a sequence of characters, determines if it is a valid english word. The problem I am having is how can I check for valid words on the board? Is brute force the only way? Testing all possible combinations from the board to see if they are valid is very slow, even for a small (5x5) board. Any help will be very appreciated, thanks!


What is the easiest genre of game to make? Before you down vote let me give some restrictions. I like RPG but they seem long and hard to make but after you make the framework the rest sort of falls into place where as platformers never get faster as each map starts from scratch. So under these conditions what is the easiest genre of game to develop as a hobby project. I am on my own. The style of graphics must be available. Can be ripped (not publishing). Not bothered about commercial quality. Must be real size game, multiple levels and stuff. Thanks Edit I build games in C and Direct x 9.c


What is the logic behind these design decisions regarding difficulty levels? In some games you are unable to play on the harder difficulties before complete it on a lower difficulty. Why? Achievements are popular. In some games you do not get an achievement for completing the game on the hardest difficulty (e.g. Bethesda RPG's) but for just about everything else, Why?


How do I get players to say "no" when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP? In my RPG, I have a companion NPC who is overconfident in his abilities and lacks self control. I wanted to create a few situations where the player needs to reign them in and tell them quot no quot . One such situation basically boiled down to this Companion Hey boss, I want to do this really stupid thing that will almost certainly make things harder for us down the road and possibly jeopardize our goal. Is that okay? Player Choices Yes, go ahead! No, don't do that! My hypothesis was that the vast majority of playtesters would choose quot No quot . To my surprise, the vast majority chose quot Yes quot ! And then when the consequences played out and indeed made things worse, playtesters wanted to reload from an earlier save point and pick the other option (choosing quot Yes quot wasn't game ending, but it did mean that a perfect outcome wasn't achievable). When I asked the playtesters why they chose yes, they made it clear that they understood that saying yes was undesirable and saying no was desirable. They also weren't seeking a challenge or anything. Instead, the most common thing I heard was I was afraid that if I said quot No quot , then I'd miss out on a sidequest or XP. One of them even said that in other RPGs he played, the only way to get a 100 playthrough was to say yes at every opportunity, and so they assumed that was the case for mine. I don't want players to assume that saying quot yes quot is always the right answer, and for now, I'd like to keep the situation of having to tell the NPC quot no quot every once in a while. But I don't know how to overcome these player expectations and their fear of missing out of content, especially without just flat out saying quot this isn't like other games, you won't miss out if you say 'no' quot . So how do I get players to say quot no quot when they are afraid of missing out on sidequests or XP?


How to make a game from the ground up I've been using unity to make 2d indie type games for a while now. However, i've tried to branch into different genres and unity cant do some of the things that i want it to do(although it is still very good). I really want to make a game from scratch were i have complete control over what happens, although i wouldn't have the slightest clue were to start. tldr what resources do you need to build a game from the ground floor. or more or less. what resources software libraries did most well made indies such as super meat boy, braid or limbo use.


Single handler vs multiple handlers for the Command Pattern I'll be soon implementing for the first time a Command pattern to catch general events about the world of the game I'm developing Since I haven't found much info about this particular issue, I'm asking if it makes more sense to have a single 'catch all' class which will eventually process any type of event or to offload events to different types of Queue e.g. player related Commands will be offloaded to the Player class, enemies related commands will be offloaded to the Enemies class, and world terrain related commands (such as chunk creation) will be handled by WorldGen Normally, this would break the idea of having a 'receiver' object as a constructor parameter of an instance of a Command, but does having just a single 'catch all' class more maintainable than partitioning the command handlers? Is it maintainable in a convoluted game to have just a single catch all class to execute every type of Command? Wouldn't it be easier to optimize the usage of more threads by having different command handlers?


Regarding physics engines and the GPU The rigid body physics engines that use a "bounding box" for collision detection, I am aware of how they are created. What I want to know is, is there a physics engine that does not use "bounding box" but actually uses something like vertex data to do the physics calculations? What type of physics engine is this called, and does it use the GPU?


Is there any specific reasons to include clearly inferior options in a game? Games contain inferior options A lot of games that I have played contain some optimal options and some clearly inferior ones. Sometimes, like in Heroes of Might amp Magic IV, it could happen due to the limited time the developers had to balance it (e.g. Academy benefits so much more from choosing Gold Golems and then Genies rather than Magi and Naga that there is no reason to go the second way). Sometimes it happens for no apparent reason However, it often happens that the developers clearly had enough time to polish the game, didn't go bankrupt after its release etc., but it is still full of quot trap quot options that sound cool, but are actually inferior to something always available in the same situation, or almost always available in similar situations. There are just so many examples of such, almost every game has something like that. For example, Age of Wonders I began a successful series thga, but a lot of abilities to be chosen for the heroes are clearly underperforming, and a lot of units have clearly better alternatives on the same levels in the same factions. It is important that while some very overpowered stuff often gets nerfed (like it also happened in AoW I), the obviously underpowered choices often stay as they are (as it also happened there). So, I ask Why do game developers create clearly inferior options in their games and don't rebalance them? Is it intentional? If it can be avoided how?


How to prevent players from forcing the veto holder to give up their veto power? In this game there is a President and the members of the Senate. Most are good, but a few are evil pretending to be good. Each day the majority attempts to figure out who is evil (using clues), takes that player to court (where they may argue in their own defense), and then the entire Senate votes on whether to convict that player (eliminate them from the game) or acquit them. Only 2 such trials are allowed per day (at night, the evil players murder someone), but only 1 conviction per day. The President may secretly be good or evil, and differs from the rest only in that he has a veto ability. If someone is taken to court, the President may at any time before the verdict is declared, instantly acquit or convict them. He may do this only 1 time. IMPORTANT EDIT The President must exercise his veto power while voting is in progress, before the decision of the majority has been made public. The problem is, the other members of the Senate, unwilling to risk the possibility of an evil President overriding the majority decision to convict an evil player at a crucial point later in the game, have developed a meta where the very first time everyone agrees to convict or acquit someone during the first trial of the game, they vocally demand the President to "waste" his veto power in agreement with the majority vote. If the President refuses they simply take him to court and convict him, eliminating him from the game. This effectively reduces the President to a normal player. How can this sort of meta be prevented? I've tried giving evil players the ability to temporarily disable the President's veto power, in order to give the President a plausible excuse for not using it immediately. This was an unsatisfactory solution because the evil players did not use it enough for the President's excuse "I was disabled by an evil player" to be convincing. Evil players simply did not care whether the President could veto because it's too early for them to tell whether the President is on their side or not.


What is the purpose of a guild bank? I've seen guild banks in Wow, or Dofus, and other MMO games. In the guild I've been a part of, we mostly used the bank as storage resources stored that end up not being used are wasted. Sometimes there is a free share policy, but there is always that one guy who will take stuff he does not really need and sells it. This led me to wonder what is the original purpose of a guild bank, what do players like to use it for, and how can a game help them do it?


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


Most Efficient way to read a Settings Configuration File I have been working on a game for quite a while, and I am using Ogre3D for the rendering engine. It is getting to the point I need to move adjustable settings to a configuration file such as video settings options, player keybindings, etc. I am using RapidXML for parsing and loading my scenes, but I am not sure this is the best way to go about doing configurations. As a long time fan of Valve games, I know there's are just a long list of settings, basically no grouping, just a list. Where as UT games do something like VideoOptions ... ... GameSettings ... ... Anyways, I am just wondering what the best way to go about this is.


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


What should developers do when they receive conflicting feedback about their game? I've been working my first mobile game (I have done a lot of web and PC games before). I wanted the idea to be simple but fun. The thing is, I received feedback from friends and family and I have heard a lot of contradictory opinions about my game. Some would say that the game is addictive, challenging and fun, while other didn't see it as a fun game and said it was boring or not really good enough. Now that I have these two opposite opinions I don't know if my game is good or not. What opinion should I listen to, and how am I supposed to know if the game is fun or not when people's opinions are mixed?


Real Time Strategy Gameplay I am working on building a HTML5 RTS game, and my current state is that I am building the Campaign mode of the game, and want to define the gameplay (The Scoring, Unit Behaviors Attributes). I am searching for links articles books about how to define the gameplay, for me this The scoring Figuring out levels of control (in any RTS game, there is units, individuals and squads) Unit action attributes properties point timing (how long it will take to play?) Achievements ..etc I want to see how they usually define these areas in RTS games, I expect to see general document discussing this concept that I can use to build the gameplay. Any idea? Is my question clear or I need to provide more details?


How does an iOS developer get his app game on the AppStores main page? I was looking at the front page of the AppStore, and they display a new game and a new app every day. I was just curious, how does an iPhone developer get their game or app onto that front page? Does Apple choose what goes on there? Or do you pay money? I was just curious, I don't develop games for iOS.


How does one measure and reward social aspects in virtual worlds? Well this sounds like a pretty vague question but please bear with me. I know of how Gaiaonline gave gold to people who participated in forum posts. I'm curious if in theory these could be applied to social aspects of games like Second life or Sims Online. The question what would be specific quantifiable actions interactions could be measured tracked for rewards and achievements that would help build a community? (this'll probably end up as community wiki though)


Newbie game programmer Where do I start? Okay, so I have been really inclined towards game programming this past few weeks. I have primarily been a web programmer and know a fair number of lanugages like PHP, Java, javascript, python, etc. I also know a little bit of C as I heard that it's used heavily in the game industry. I have no experience in game development, but I am a fast learner.(I am 15 so I guess I still have a lot of time.) So, is there any language I should learn to develop 2d and 3d games? Also which IDE(free) is a nice place to start compiling your ideas(something like Polycode http polycode.org ). I looked up Polycode but it was a little confusing for me to build it. I have a fair idea about what DirectX, OpenGL, SDL and shaders are but I have absolutely no clue about programming them. I know it's a little early to start jumping into this stuff already but you gotta start somewhere right? Please help me as I really want to get into serious game programming. Thanks! I am running Windows 8 Pro 32 bit. Please suggest me any software accordingly!


How should I structure a design document? Should the design document be a continuous line of text, with real sentences, more like a description of the entire game, or should I structure it in simple points? What are the benefits, and are there more ways of structuring it?


Mathematics should I learn for 2D and 3D game programming development What mathematics should I learn to become game programer 2D and 3D. From the very basic for beginner until advance


Where should input be used? I'm working on an input system (in C ) and now I'm wondering, what is the best place to put input functionality? Currently what I was coding was a bunch of delegates which act as callbacks (i.e. onkeypress, onmouseclick, etc) and the idea is when the input manager checks for input it invokes these delegaetes. However this means that input is updated when the input manager updates and not when a game class has its own update function called. The way I see it is moving input functionality out of a classes update function and deferring them would forecefully reduce the codes complexity (particularly the update function) but on the other hand I'm thinking it might be a better idea to move update and input to the same place as it would give the coder more freedom to work with the input systems. Anyone have any ideas on this matter?


Where does game logic belong? I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around the 'high levels' of game logic and where how large components, such as collision detection physics, rendering, and user input, interact with one another. What I'm asking is how you deal with these higher level interactions. Here is what I am doing interface Stage() or a "scene" as many call it. Manages the logic for Actors init() update() update this stage render() render this stage StageManager() implements Stage a stage that manages stages ) var stages array lt Stage gt init() create a MainStage amp other stages that may be used in this specific game update() logic for checking which stage should be active render() tell the active stage to render getActiveStage() MainStage() implements Stage var mainCharacter var actors array lt GameObject gt var ... init() create the player, game world, other initialization stuff update() collision detection, check mainCharacter state, etc render() render all the Actors on this stage handleMouseClick() handleKeyBoardEvent() Main() created on game start var manager new StageManager() updateGameState() manager.update() loop renderState() manager.render() loop My main gripe with this is that the StageManager and all other Stages will become enormous and unwieldy as the game scales over time. Off the top of my head, some components can be delegated out such as a Stage uses a PhysicsManager, but there would still be all the keyboard events and what not. I was thinking of making individual Actors listen to events and giving them an update() method, thus encapsulating what an Actor should do at any given point. However, I would run into complications when an Actor needed game state information (game time, a "power up" Actor needing the player's speed) and I would no longer have Stages as Actors are now managing themselves.


How to resolve combat of stacks of units to mitigate numerical advantage I just started designing an strategy game where player's armies consist of stacks of units. For my design I was aiming to reproduce the following behaviour for a full combat of multiple turns (for simplicity assume both stacks are the same unit) 1 vs full stack the single unit is killed, the full stack hardly notices. half stack vs full stack the half stack is killed, the full stack sustain noticeable damage. almost full stack vs full stack full stack wins but gets almost wiped out. If randomness is involved, any of both may win, although the bigger one has statistical advantage. My first approach was to add up the stats and treat each stack as a single unit, resolve the combat and then calculate how many units are killed. That didn't produced the expected results, as even the slight numerical advantage in one side produced it to win by a huge margin. The reason is that after each turn, the bigger stack would kill more enemies than the smaller, widening the power difference for the next turn. This different increases exponentially until the smaller stack is quickly obliterated. As a second approach I treated each unit in a stack individually for the combat (something that I wanted to avoid), which produces much better results. However now I have many choices about how to resolve the combat. Should it be a series of 1 vs 1 or should I allow units to gang up on others? Should I pair each evenly or randomly? Should I leave extra units unpaired as "reserve", or all units should fight at least once?


two part dice pool mechanic I'm working on a dice mechanic resolution system based on the Ghost Echo (hereafter shortened to G E) tabletop RPG. Specifically, since G E can be a little harsh dealing with consequences and failure, I was hoping to soften the system and add a little more player control, as well as offer the chance to evolve player characters into something unique, right from creation. So, here's the mechanic Players roll 2 separate d12 against each of the two statistics for their character (each is a number from 2 11, and may be rolled above or below depending on the nature of the action attempted, rolling your stat exactly always fails). Depending on the success for that roll, they add dice to the pool rolled for a modified G E style action. The acting player gets two dice anyhow, and I am debating offering a bonus die for each success, or a single bonus die for succeeding on both of the statistic compared rolls. Once the size of the dice pool is set, the entire pool is rolled, and the players are allowed to assign the rolled dice to a goal and a danger, one to each. Assigned results are judged as follows 1 4 means the attempted goal fails, or the danger comes true. 5 8 is a partial success at the goal, or partially avoiding the danger. 9 12 means the goal is achieved, or the danger avoided. My concerns are twofold Firstly, is the two stage action too complicated, with two rolls to judge separately before anything can happen? Secondly, are the statistics involved going too far in softening the game? I've run some basic simulations, and the approximate statistics follow 2 dice (up to) 3 dice (up to) 4 dice failure 33 25 20 partial 33 35 35 success 33 40 45 I'd appreciate any advice that addresses my concerns or offers to refine my simulation (right now the first roll is statistically modeled as sign(1d12 1d12), where 0 is a success).


What are the code structures for storyline based game? I am curious about how storyline based games are written. For example if the character done Event A, then he meets an NPC and result in Event B. On the other hand if the character didn't do Event A, then he meets an NPC and result in Event C. From the code structure that I've thought up, the NPC should be an object of a class, and there should be a status variable that mark if character have done Event A or not. However, what if there's thousand of similar type of Event as Event A? How'd I handle huge, complex storyline game in coding? I just want to know exactly how the trick was done to keep in check of what Events have happened. Another thing that I'm curious about is how Event is kept in. An object? or just a function? For example Event A might have some flashy effect played in non fmv ,while maybe Event B is an fmv, and Event C might be a battle. and there may be variety of them. Therefore, how would I handle variety of Events with a consistence method? or maybe, at the very least, contain them in a consistence way (function? or Object?) I just want to know how the trick was done.


Why do loot drops contain (mostly) useless items? I was thinking about this and couldn't figure this out. In Diablo you kill enemies and they drop random things. But usually the drops are worthless to you relative to what you already have equipped. Why bother building a drop system that gives you crappy drops? Maybe I'm not communicating my question well so I'll provide an alternative implementation Instead of frequently dropping crappy items and rarely dropping good items, why not only rarely drop good items? I guess that crappy items adds to the addictive ness somehow, but I don't understand why. Why is dropping crappy items part of the design? What does that add? Edit FWIW, I have been referring to Diablo 2 as my reference, not D3. But it's still interesting to see answers explaining why D2 was more addictive.


Specialisation in game roles Getting better by learning vs leveling Many games have some sort of role for the players, especially in multiplayer games. Medic, Sniper, Rifleman, AT Specialist in Battlefield, Healer, Tanks, DDs in MMOs, etc. Now, in many games, there are incentives to specialize in a certain role, allowing access to better equipment for this role. Most of the time, you archive this equip by playing a certain amount of time, gather XP (by doing the roles job), or archive certain goals for that role (heal 1000 players, deal X amount of damage. Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Quake Wars are good examples for that. Alternatively the player gets "better" in the role by pure stats. They get more health, they heal more etc. In contrast to that some games have certain roles, that a player can fulfill just by picking certain equipment, that everyone is able to pick. So in theory, every player is as capable of fullfilling the same role. The difference is in the skill of the player and the depth of the role to fulfill. The game i have in mind is a coop crew game, where you manage and controll a ship, much like Pulsar Lost Colony, but much more complicated. Engineering would mean to flux the vents and stabalizing the emitters, which means to have complicated "mini games" to archive a certain goal Activating the engine and keep it running. Similiar to Space Station 13 maybe. So, either i could go the leveling way The engineer gets traits and stats, what make those minigames easier for him (make something move slower, get a better result). The other thing could be the learning way you have to learn how to do things, make it more "realistic" and with different (scalar) outcome. I tend toward learning the about the mechanics. The idea is that you might have more than one person for a certain role, like a chief engineer and many other working in engineering, teaching them the in and outs, maybe even on equal terms. It also would make the game more hectic and thus more reliant on communication. A hard level base would mean, that someone is distinctivly better, if he is a higher level. The higher levels would need to do most of the work, hence their boni are just to good to waste. On other hand, for roles with less of a learning curve, that wouldnt make that much sense, since mastering it is a lot easier. In that case, it would make sense to have one with skills in this role. But, if you have a pilot with skills for a faster ship, it would be wasted on a slower, but less manouverable ship, where a pilot with talents for better mobility would be far better. For a premade group of players, that would be alright, but if you got drop in, drop out, that would be hard to balance for. What style of role specialisation (leveling vs learning) has what advantage and disadvantage? What would fit better to that syle of game im working on?


stats or profit give away result of game Think of a coinflip game, whose logic looks as follows Server sends websocket message (RESULT MESSAGE) to frontend with result of a game (won lost) Server sends websocket message to frontend with updated aggregated stats (STATS MESSAGE) (think all time profit after the new coin flip, or updated all time stats) Frontend reacts to RESULT MESSAGE by playing an animation (coin flipping). It also updates the all time stats and profit in response to STATS MESSAGE The problem with this logic is, responding to STATS MESSAGE (updating profit and stats) gives away the result of the coin flip before the animation finishes. Solutions I cannot use Merging RESULT MESSAGE and STATS MESSAGE together, and only updating the stats profit after animation finishes. Because those 2 messages are produced and sent by different services. Linking a particular RESULT MESSAGE to a STATS MESSAGE and only reacting to a STATS MESSAGE when its corresponding RESULT MESSAGE has been processed and its animation completed. Because in reality I have several kinds of STATS MESSAGES (trophies updated, stats updated, profit balance updated, etc), and it's just not practical for the frontend to hold onto all those messages until their respective RESULT MESSAGE is processed Solutions I've tried successfully before, but I'm trying to avoid Having the backend send STATS MESSAGE with a delay, to make sure it doesn't reach the frontend before the coinflip animation has finished. This sort of encodes frontend behavior (animation) on the backend. All ideas and suggestions appreciated. Thanks a lot! EDIT I made the coin flipping example for simplicity, but it's not precisely con flipping. It's a multiplayer game where dozens of games animations per user per seconds are going on. So queuing a bunch of stuff on the frontend might be less than ideal (I'm still looking into performant versions of this solution though). Pulling the STATS data via an API call when the animation finishes (instead of using websockets data) is another alternative that I've considered, but for the same reason described above it might not be feasible (dozens of API calls per user per second). Plus there's a chance that an API call is triggered by game 1 finishing, but while game 2 animation is still going on, giving away the result of game 2


How to propertly send map to clients in MMO? I'm designing a game where the map has 1 M tiles. The game is simple, is a 2D game with low graphic requirements and without player movements, only change states, so I don't need to update player positions for example. But I have a doubt about how to synchronize the map. When a client connects, the server should send him data related with proximity tiles. Each tile is represented with a different picture, so I can represent them with an id (integer). Developing in c , each tile requires 4 bytes to store the id. So when the client connects, I have to send him (4 bytes number of tiles). Sending data of 1000 tiles (a 30x30 grid), I'm sending 4 kb, and this is just in the first connection. When the client player moves, I have to send him more and more data, which has not a good performance. On the other hand, if I store all the ids in the client, I will need to store 1M 4 byte 4 mb per client. This is just to store tile ids, but it seems to be ok. How can I design or optimize the data messaging ?


Sounds to describe the weather? I'm trying to think of sounds that will help convey the time of day and weather condition. I'm not even sure of all the weather conditions I would consider, and some are obvious. Like if it's raining, the sound of rain. But then I'm thinking, what about for a calm day? If it's morning time, I could do birds chirping or something. Night time could be an owl or something. What are some good combinations of sounds weather time to have a good effect?


What's the difference between Gameplay Programming and Graphic Programming? I know the answers are obvious, someone told me this Graphics Programming DirectX(or Direct3d), OpenGL, Vulkan, Metal.. Gameplay Programming Bringing everything together. From design, music, levels, etc. But could you please explain me in depth the difference? This way i can focus on a specific role in game programming!


Games where the story continues via progeny In Phantasy Star III Generations of Doom for the Sega Genesis you periodically marry and then the story carries on through your sons daughters. In Rogue Legacy when you die you again play on through your decendents (IIRC). I am working on an RPG and am thinking about a similar concept for a death mechanic. I want dying to cause some of your loot skills to pass on to your progeny, who can then pick up where you left off (more or less). What are some potential design pitfalls in implementing such a mechanic? One that I already see is that if I make it too punishing, players will revert to last save, not punishing enough and they'll die on purpose. Bonus points for referencing existing games (other than the two I mentioned).


Player rewards in games where you normally have nothing to purchase In many games there are rewards such as gold coins, points, etc. When these rewards can be used to purchase in game items, it motivates the player to keep playing. Let's say we have an online game, poker, Yatzy etc. What type of reward would keep the players playing if there are few in game items available to buy, or none at all? What I am looking for is a reward system that entices the players to play more in a game environment where there isn't that much to purchase. For example, there isn't much to buy in a poker or Yatzy game with the gold you win. I guess having some titles that are added to the userid is one way, or maybe purchasing a logo for the id... A leaderboard is another. Any thoughts on this?


Design criteria question kids games I am currently designing a game for small kids that have not yet learned to read and would like to get some opinions, and views, on scoring? Given that these (hopefully) will be small children that cannot yet read or children that have just learned to read, between 2 5 maybe what about scoring, do you think that is needed? My idea was to avoid both any character at all and only use pictures. However, if scoring is implemented there re always other ways to do that i guess with colors, bars etc. Would someone nice just elaborate a bit on general design criteria's for this type of games and applications with this target audience?


Should my platformer have collectibles? By collectibles, I mean objects that you collect mainly for the sake of collecting them, not to power up. Think coins in Super Mario or bandages in Super Meat Boy. I've seen a few platformers that do not have any collectibles and it's the platforming itself which is challenging (my platformer itself is challenging), but I think adding collectibles will add extra challenge and re playability, especially if some of the collectibles are really well hidden. Tradition would dictate that you should have collectibles, as it's a way for players to gain extra lives or even gain points, but that would not be the only reason to have collectibles. I'm not interested in making features for feature sake. I'm purely wanting an opinion on whether collectibles should be included in a game and what should the collectibles do when you collect enough? Is a simple 1 life fine? Should there be some cool object you get? Possibly should collecting really change something hectic, like collect 100 coins and your character is invincible? How do I decide if my platformer should have collectibles? Closed. While I disagree with the closing as according to the FAQ What should be asked game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc). I got some nice pros and cons from everyone. I have updated the question slightly to be more specific.


How to make fighting roster fair I plan on creating a fighting game in the future, and I'm wondering how to make a roster functionally fair, and feel fair. You see, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate is functionally fair (I think), but at certain times, it doesn't feel fair (partially because I suck at the game). Mario's up smash is one of the few that can't hit people on the lower platforms of battlefield, however, it still feels fair game somehow (up tilt is my guess). However, when playing against Ness, it can feel unfair to play because the other player can just spam PK Fire (side special) and then smash attack them at high enough HP. In other words, it is fair, but not fun. How can I avoid something being spammed feeling unfair when creating a fighting game, and all the other moves of characters feel (and actually be) fair?


Calculating complex D D style interactions So I don't even know if this is the right community to ask (as I imagine it's probably quite maths heavy) in but I figure it falls under the realm of game mechanics. I want to develop a game mechanic that utilises complex D amp D style interactions but on another level from that, but I don't really know where to begin conceptually. What I mean by D amp D style interactions is each character will have a set of attributes, strength, skill, intelligence etc and those attributes will dictate how interactions play out between characters. So for basic example, two characters battling each other and each attribute ranges from 0 20. Character A Attack 13, Defence 14 Character B Attack 15, Defence 10. So when Character A strikes at Character B I need to calculate how successful that attack would be and what the outcome would be, which would then feed back into their attributes. So maybe their attack is semi successful and produced a flesh wound, not enough to kill but that reduces Character B's Attack attribute to say 13. Now that's a fairly trivial, example where I want to try and take it to the next level is to introduce combined attributes that all have an impact on the outcome of a move. So Skill, Experience, Fitness, Attack Speed, Anticipation and even Luck (which I figure would be randomised and offset by attributes like Experience). Ideally I'd like to build an engine where I can define attributes and how they interact and can add more over time to build up the complexity of interactions. But I am at a loss where to begin. I'm not looking for a ready made solution but just to be pointed in the right direction. To add some further explanation as to where I'm struggling. Are there known algorithms, techniques or maths solutions that are used to calculate attribute based interactions? In my head I'm imagining some system of values and weights with some pseudo randomness thrown in but I'm at a loss as to how you actually calculate outcomes. When I try and think it through all I get is a massive set of 'if' statements where values go in at the top, if's are applied and modify the outcomes. So... If CharA Attack 15 and CharB Defence 10 Then Outcome Kill If CharA Speed 10 and CharB Speed 12 Then Outcome Deflected Blow If CharA Luck 14(random) and CharB Luck 7(random) Then Outcome Flesh Wound Etc...


Newbie game programmer Where do I start? Okay, so I have been really inclined towards game programming this past few weeks. I have primarily been a web programmer and know a fair number of lanugages like PHP, Java, javascript, python, etc. I also know a little bit of C as I heard that it's used heavily in the game industry. I have no experience in game development, but I am a fast learner.(I am 15 so I guess I still have a lot of time.) So, is there any language I should learn to develop 2d and 3d games? Also which IDE(free) is a nice place to start compiling your ideas(something like Polycode http polycode.org ). I looked up Polycode but it was a little confusing for me to build it. I have a fair idea about what DirectX, OpenGL, SDL and shaders are but I have absolutely no clue about programming them. I know it's a little early to start jumping into this stuff already but you gotta start somewhere right? Please help me as I really want to get into serious game programming. Thanks! I am running Windows 8 Pro 32 bit. Please suggest me any software accordingly!


How do I represent projectiles in a video game? I'm making a simple fixed shooter game, similar to "Galaga",) as part of a presentation I'm doing. I'm wondering what strategies and data structures would people use for tracking projectiles, like lasers fired from the spaceship. A super simple implementation that I've used, before, is to just represent each projectile as a point, and check for collisions with all objects in the scene. However, this seems costly, in large scenes with many projectiles I'm wondering what other types of strategies or implementations are used for this type of use case. What do games like FPS use for tracking projectiles (bullets, tank shells, etc)?


What would be a good sport game for a beginner intermediate game dev to make for practice? I'm interested in making a sport game for practice, but giving it some fun twists sort of like nintendo does, (super strikers charged, mario golf.) I'm planning on using unity, but since I am by no means an expert I'm trying to figure out a sport that will be reasonably easy to create. I'm aware that its not going to be easy, but, for instance I'm not going to make a game like madden, which would have a ton of difficult stuff like play calls which involve predetermined paths and intelligence on both sides, in general way to difficult. What would be a good sport to try a stylized version of? I'm aware that this is a subjective question, but it isn't a question where any answer is as good as another, so I think it's allowed according to the guideline, but correct me if I'm wrong I guess.


Level playing field Punish the better player or enhance the worse player? I am making a 1 vs 1 game where each player controls a car with an identical joystick. The objective for the players is to reach a goal destination before the other player. The players of the game are placed into categories based of the skills controlling the car e.g. Skill level 1,2,3,4,5 with 5 being the highest skill level. The players will not be intended to jump up and down in skill levels when playing the game. After a given period, e.g. a week, the skill levels will be updated. This will not be shown to the players. The objective for me is to make every combination of players in the 1 vs 1 setting be a 50 50 win loss chance for the players. Example Player 1(Skill level 5) vs player 2(Skill level 1) should each have 50 change reaching the goal destination first. I have not been able to find any research on whether the best practice is to limit the abilities of the good player or enhance the abilities of the bad player or maybe a combination. The idea is to have disabled adolescents playing against their able bodied friends or family members. It is therefore not a possibility to not let good players play against bad ones. Data from field tests have shown that the disabled adolescents perform worse than able bodied consistently due to spasms. I am looking for input on how to go about with this research, your experiences, how other games are doing it? Is there any common recommendations for this?


How can I scale player enemy stats to balance the difficulty just right? I'm creating an old school top down grid based RPG, where you enter random encounters every few steps. I want to know what kind of systems or guidelines there are for creating the leveling and stats system for such a game. Right now I'm just sort of guessing based on intuition and it's clear that that isn't going to work for very long. For example, let's say I have a max level cap of 50, and 10 dungeons. The ideal would be that the player should need to gain about 5 levels per dungeon in order to stand a chance in the next dungeon, but that the monsters in the current dungeon can't provide enough XP to skip the next dungeon (within a reasonable amount of time anyway). The easy route that I can think of would be to just define every enemy as worth 1 XP, and then set the amount of XP required for the next level in increasing increments, so that I only really have to track number of kills (level 1 2 would be 10 XP, or 10 kills, level 2 3 would be 12 XP, or 12 kills, etc.). But that's boring. As a player myself, I like to see the numbers related to my actions get larger over time (i.e. at level 1 2 as 10 XP, but level 2 3 as 150 XP, etc.). And that's not even counting for stats like Strength, Vitality, and so on. But that in itself is a whole other question are there any kinds of formulas for stats and their effects on each other? For example, enemy has 50 armor, and my guy has 30 strength. That is considerably more armor than strength, so I would expect my hit to be pretty weak...but how can I calculate those statistics to get a final damage number? Are there any guides or any kind of "standards" for such basic systems? Even if "every game is different," I still need to learn the absolute BASIC ideas for "most" games. I have questions such as, "if you have an agility like stat, what is a common way to determine dodge rate?" and so on. EDIT I found this after posting, but I'm gonna include the link here if someone else stumbles across this with similar questions. Balancing Player vs. Monsters Level Up Curves


Occupation groups for a country simulation game I'm trying to create citizen occupation groups or job classes for a country management game I'm developing. I want it to be inclusionary but also very basic. I did some research but all job lists I got contains more than 20 job types like farming, mining, education, law but It's too many for my game's setting and It still doesn't include every workforce. I need wider spectrum of jobs but I'm having trouble to categorize them, like labour, public service etc... Any help is appreciated.


Game timings and formats There are more or less standardized TV show movie formats and recommended timings 1. By the early 1960s, television companies commonly presented half hour long "comedy" series, or one hour long "dramas." Half hour series were mostly restricted to situation comedy or family comedy, and were usually aired with either a live or artificial laugh track. One hour dramas included genre series such as police and detective series, westerns, science fiction, and, later, serialized prime time soap operas. Programs today still overwhelmingly conform to these half hour and one hour guidelines. Source 2. In the United States, most medical dramas are one hour long. Source 3. Traditionally serials were broadcast as fifteen minute installments each weekday in daytime slots. In 1956 As the World Turns debuted as the first half hour soap opera. All soap operas broadcast half hour episodes by the end of the 1960s. With increased popularity in the 1970s most soap operas expanded to an hour (Another World even expanded to ninety minutes for a short time). More than half of the serials had expanded to one hour episodes by 1980. As of 2010, six of the seven US serials air one hour episodes each weekday. Source Interesting. Are there any standards of timing in game development? Well, 5 20 minutes casual games, of course. There is even a "5 minutes game" site. And 1 hour gamer site. Are there 1 week, 1 year, 1 eternity game formats? Chess and Go deep games that you can study all your life but they are played in hour or several days (pro games). Addictive long term online role playing games (without win condition) are played in monthes and, possibly, years. Replayability is an important factor to consider. It's good when game design document contains a line "A game is designed for solving in X hours". How can it be measured before there is any prototype or demo? When you know your game format, you know your audience (and vice versa). It is practical question. Are there psychological researches about dynamic of gaming interest and involvement? And is there a correlation between game format and game genre?


How to know if a game concept is "different enough"? For the past year or so, I've been designing a top down zombie shooter game. However, after playing a 2d top down battle royale game, it's given me inspiration to build a similar game. The graphics would be very similar, though there would be new things like building. I'm trying to decide if this concept is different enough there's another similar game, though it has different graphics and some other key differences. I'm wondering at what point two games become too similar, and how to avoid taking too many ideas from one game (a common problem for me).


What is the best implementation of an automated tournament? Here are the specs so far to give you an idea to the question. should be fully automate able should not inconvenience the player with regards to time should allow for a voted wild card system should involve skill will be done on a limited time frame Was thinking of using a ladder like system similar to battle net 2.0 but it would seem to need some tweaking to meet all of the above. Any suggestions on what would be an ideal tournament implementation for such requirements?


How do I portray characters with a bum leg properly in an action game like Devil May Cry, without making him a liability? Right now, I'm designing a character for a 2D action platformer game. The problem is that said character has a bum leg due to an accident a few years prior to the game's setting, but was the first one to be dragged into a dungeon formed by the newly developing incident, and had to escape on his own. What I've thought about until now about this The character will move slower than the normal movement speed, cannot double jump, and have a lower jump height than the normal jump height. However, he would use a sword that doubles as a retractable whip, allowing his melee attacks to have a wide coverage. Said sword whip has low damage by default, however. There's also that his melee attacks are less focused on launching enemies upwards and more focused on knocking them back and maybe apply bleeding (non elemental damage over time). He would also have a shotgun that can be 'charged' to maximize the damage output, very much like the Gunslinger Style Shotgun in DMC3 and 4. My problem is that this character will be one from around eight (for now), and the other seven characters don't have such a disability two of them I intend to have the ability to glide mid air. The game will have a feature of switching between three characters chosen to engage the other dungeons, so he can be switched out for sections that require double jumping, but I'm not sure that's an optimal solution, especially considering the lower damage his weapon deals (making him a non optimal pick for boss battles). Should I just make each character fulfill a specific niche in terms of mobility options, melee attack options, and ranged attack options? How does one design the map and bosses for these cases, without making it seem like giving him too much of a break? P.S. Can a grappling hook be involved, without ending up making him the best option to navigate the map (like refreshing it only after landing)? EDIT I also have a thought of integrating this grappling hook into the sword whip, being able to pull enemies towards him, or him towards them. Is it possible to use this as a melee charge attack? Because I still think that it doesn't feel right.


How to address players struggling with simple controls? I have an HTML game I built with Phaser 3, and I can't decide what to do with the controls. I've changed them several times, and now I feel like I've hit a sweet spot between usability and fun. However, I still see people struggle. The game involves a boy with a slingshot that can be pulled back and fired to knock the enemy's head off. There are two virtual buttons on both side of the screen that are tapped to turn the character. I'm considering having the character turn automatically, so that the slingshot is the only mechanic involved and the game can be picked up and played without instructions. However, I feel like this will destroy the whole point of being fast to turn and shoot the enemy. Should a simple game like mine require instructions, or is usability more important?


Score vs. Kills in a casual game I am making a simple phone game and having a conceptual argument with my partner. The argument might end up being inconsequential, but I would like to hear some opinions from actual devs who are making games. This will be a pretty standard beat em up style game where you beat up lots of easy enemies and build up a huge kill count. There will be many different types of enemies. The question emerged when we had to put up some display on the UI. Should the kill count be represented as a 1 1 number? For example, on your HUD, it will constantly show Kills 15 or Defeated 31 Or, should it be represented by a score? For example 1 enemy 100 points and it will display something like this Score 1200 This may be a matter of taste in the end. But, for the casual games market, what do you think a mainstream audience will enjoy more? I think people love big numbers, in general, what do you guys think?


What is the better way to speed up gameplay as the level rises? I started with game programming couple of weeks back. For the starters I tried to develop ZigZag (link takes you to 2 min gameplay). I am done with the logic of gameplay by now. It runs well and all. Now I want to speed up the gameplay as user passes some score. Say after 100 points increase the speed of the ball. I have two options Control the speed using time delay by varying time.delay(var). Actually increasing the speed of the moving ball Not sure which one is a good idea in long term, I'm looking for help from experienced game developers. You can checkout the source code https github.com ravi ojha zigway blob master zigway.py


Web single player 2d top down RPG background image, sprites, and new level loading I'm making a web single player 2D top down rpg using JavaScript (create js library) and have a couple questions. For the background image, I've currently loaded a 1000x1000 bitmap to represent the background for my rpg world (per level). It's drawn in relation to the camera (aka the canvas 500x500) so not all of it is on the screen at the same time. If it's not on the screen, is it still using resources to be drawn? I eventually want to have a much larger "world", which will require a much larger bitmap... What is the best way to load a background image? And what about sprites? I'm assuming if I create several sprite objects with bitmaps... even if they aren't on the camera, they are still using resources? This may slow down the game. Level loading If I walk to another level, or go inside a building, I'd like to load that bitmap... Is there a specific way to architect level loading? Thank you!


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


How to create a user friendly magic spell system? I'm designing a small 2D top down open world survival ish game with a magic spell system. The way it works so far The player receives a "wand" at the beginning of the game As the player encounters new items and enemies, they gain spells to help them use those items defeat those enemies The problem I'm having is designing a way to cast the spells. At first, I just bound different spells to keys 0 10, but very soon the number of spells overwhelmed it, and you also have the problem of lower level spells not being used in the late game but still being bound to the most useful keys. So, what's the best way to make a user friendly spellcasting system? I can overhaul the way magic works in my game if needed. EDIT Just to clarify, I'm developing for PC in real time with large variation in spell type and purpose, although this question should apply to all platforms.


Is there a leveling guide somewhere? I am designing a simple game and am looking for some help designing different level ranks. For instance, starting from "Novice" to "Intermediate" to "Master". Is there are repository somewhere that records these from various games? For instance, from World of Warcraft, Diablo etc. Any suggestions?


How to incorporate (agile) user stories with specs into game development? It seems some features changes lend themselves to user stories "as a user, I want to be prompted to exit or retry the battle after the hero dies, since these are the only two common navigations". But other features wouldn't be a good fit for stories, like a detailed description of which game elements appear during an event. How are these detailed specs incorporated into the agile task system? Certainly the umbrella task could be written as an epic, but the specs seem not to fit as stories. (They are not about direct user motivation or benefit, because these specs often make the game harder, like "boss health should refill at 100 per 90 seconds".) Note we're using Jira to track bugs and tasks.


How do you come up with ideas for new games? What is the best way in your opinion to find new ideas for games? I want to invent something really new (like Gish, World of Goo, Crayon Physics etc), but I'm having problems coming up with new, creative ideas.


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