Need a reference to an unusual? RTS setting Imagine an RTS game where so called basic units play the main role throughout a whole game session. In my game basic units are actually programmable by a player (like in Colobot Ceebot), that's why it is so important to keep them significant from the first to the last second of each session. Problem I found out that end game of a typical session is quite boring, no impression of... say, development of a game since middle game. Don't know how to describe this feeling correctly. I'm looking for reference to other games where such problem of end game was resolved. Thanks in advance. UPDATE Some more background The game is about splitting tasks which are best solved by chip and by brain. Player does not have to micromanage, he or she writes algorithms (in advance) instead. Players are to make strategic decisions and give high level orders. I.e. if you have better combat algorithms for a group of bots you're better at micromanagement. The same goes for engineering units in home front. The typical border between middle game and end game is when all "free" resource sources are conquered by one of players, resources are being drilled, roads a constructed and factories produce bots at full speed (everything is automated by players in a way they want). Frontier line is more or less clear and stable. From this point there is no choice of rush produce defend, you are to collect forces, invent tricky maneuvers and attack. At this moment there is only one work for players brains tricky tactics. It is something human brain excels at (in comparison to algorithms). Balance is so that frontal attacks are very costly (good defense can destroy a great amount of units if an attack is frontal). Therefore attacking from multiple directions, "red herring" fast relocation along the front line become very important (exactly like at wars in the middle of XXth century, e.g. WWII). Again, this is where the human brain is much better than any program, so it makes no sense for players to write algorithms for such tasks. My concerns is that in end game it becomes just like a hexagon game with a very limited amount of units since all underlying tasks are "encapsulated" by algorithms. Supreme Commander resolves such problem by introducing experimentals, Populous does it with spells (I remind, Populous The Beginning has only five basic units). Again, thanks in avance )


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


What colors to choose for colorblind people? I'm creating a game. Color coding is its main gameplay feature. What colors should I choose so the game will be colorblind friendly? (I need 4 colors)


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


What is the difference between framerate independent vs framerate dependent? What is the difference between framerate independent vs framerate dependent? Can you please give an example.


How can I make sure all army compositions are counterable in an RTS game? Most RTS games I played have some kind of rock paper scissors system that ensure that there is no single best unit you can mass and win with all the time. However this breaks down when players start to combine different kinds of units. Just make one unit type then make the counter of its counters to protect it. Eventually players will find the best pairing that mutually protect each other, then everyone will copy that and all other combinations become inferior to that and won't see play. We can see this in Empire Earth 1 for example, where up to middle ages all you need to do is just mass chariot cavalry archers and swordsmen. Although spearmen and knights wreck the swords, they are destroyed by arrows. And archers are destroyed by swords, but your swords are blocked by enemy swords so you'll have hard time reach enemy archers... So all you can do is just try to make more swords and archers than the enemy. You can also use area of effect siege weapons against archers, but they are expensive and totally wrecked by swords. So all players use just swords and archers against everything including buildings. This what I would like to avoid and I would like to make sure other units also see play. So the question is How can I make sure that not just individual unit types but but all possible combinations of them have a counter combination that costs less resources than the opponent's army? Is there a mathematical framework for that?


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


How to prune an AI game tree for a game like Magic? I've got a game tree structure for my AI that I need to trim in order to gain some depth. It is a single player game of perfect information. A good analogy would be a single player game of Magic the gathering with an oponnenet that plays no card but automaticaly deals you some damage per turn. Since I don't have an opponent I don't need either minimax (I can do a pure MAX) or a b pruning. I got an evaluation function I can use on nodes if necessary. I'm trying to plan ahead and find good combo's of cards to play. I dont want to hard code these combos. I'm finding hard to prune any branch at all since even a branch with bad scoring node can potentially lead to a good combo that will completely change the game (you know, like play 5 shitty cards and be almost dead but the 6th card will grant you a win). Any idea on how to approach pruning in a game tree like that?


Should cooldown be time or tick based? In the past I've done cooldowns as a specific time in ms, but I was thinking isn't having tick based cooldowns better. This would be more accurate and efficent(not sure). The bad side I can think about is that if the tick rate is increased, it would affect the game logic. While having a base update rate and a multiplier(that can be applied to everything that is tied to tick rate) would probably fix this, I am not sure if this is a good approach.


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


creation of a meta game OK, I feel like this should be on meta, because it is a very meta question, but I thought it would be interesting to discuss here. it is relevant and it might provide a little break from coding. Using these sites you can essentially get a very good answer to any problem. In fact I think it would be safe to say you can pretty much get people to discuss the best algorithm for any given problem. I was wondering if it would be interesting to create a whole game this way. you would ask the first question for instance What type of game would be the best game to make if the project was going to be worked on by an unknown amount of designers and developers? The answer would be subjective, but people could discuss and after a time the answer with the most votes could be chosen and the question locked out. This would be the hardest question I suppose, because after that you would get more and more technical and the questions would become more and more like the questions you ask on these forums. What would be the best class structure for this segments of a game? What would be the best way of testing for collisions etc.. Do you think it would be possible to create a whole game this way? Sorry if this seems bizarre or annoying, but I think it might be worth a try! Think of this as the zeroth question. What do you think?


Game Level Design Career translations in other fields Although I would love to get a job in the gaming industry I can't help but feel I should have a backup plan. What I wanted to ask is game level design a marketable skill that translates to other industries? For example if your a programming in game development, you can be a software engineer in business, health care, finance, scientific etc, industries If your an artist in game development, you can be an graphic artist, web designer, animator, advertisement, etc. Do game level designers have other industries they can get into other than gaming? If you think so, what are some industries that level design (or game design) would be marketable for?


Designing interface for interacting with game objects I'm making a roguelike ( like) game, somewhat like Project Zomboid or Don't Starve. In my game, there are many different object in the world that the player can interact with there are also many items, some of which may be required for a particular interaction. Physically, all I have to trigger the interaction is the mouse click when player clicks on an object, something happens (adding right click is an option too, but staying with just one button is preferable). There are several problems here For a given object, there might be several interactions possible. I might want do drive the car, or access its truk, or refuel it etc. Some interactions may require an item I need an axe to chop down trees or a fuel source to refuel a car. Some interactions may be non obvious, so I need to have some sort of discovery mechanism. Some way to say to the player "You could chop down this tree if you had an axe". Some interactions should be very quick. Whacking an enemy with a bat should NOT require clicking and then choosing an action from menu just clicking should work. Added The list of objects, items and interactions is pretty open ended. I'm still developing the game, and in the future players might make mods. This means that the interface must be generic enough to adapt to new interactions automatically. Given these constraints, I'm really struggling to devise a good interface for interactions. I can't show a menu of all possible actions on click, because that would break (4). I can't just leave one single on click action, because that would break (3) and probably (1). How can I present all options to the player in a usable and preferably obvious way?


Application of Game trees in AI My specific area of interest is designing the AI of real time multiplayer games, for example, RTS games. Moves by players happen simultaneously, so I was wondering whether or not it would be modeled with a sequential (extensive form) game tree or something else. I don't know if this is even the correct approach at all, and if some other algorithms are more applicable. How much of Artificial Intelligence design is based off of game trees or extensive form games, and are there any suggested textbooks which thoroughly cover the subject game tree application to AI or AI of RTS games?


Balancing players between air land fields in a PvP match Background In my game there are two teams per PvP match, and those two teams are further divided into air land fields. Each team has 12 players on the ground and 6 patrolling the sky. The goal of the game is for the air land units to work together to win the match. Players are matchmade into games randomly, without taking into account skill field preference etc (the short explanation is that we don't have control over this). The problem If I allow complete freedom in choosing fields, I might end up with no players in the sky or vice versa on one or both teams. If I don't give players a choice, they won't be happy when they aren't assigned to the field of their preference. Overall I imagine the fields would balance out on their own if they're equally enjoyable, but there's little room for error there if either field gets a bad first impression, it'll be difficult to recover from. I want to ensure there are some constraints in place to prevent death by conjecture. I thought of adding 1 or 2 landing pads at either team's base, and that way players who wanted to play the land field could land, and players who wanted to play the air field could take a parked aircraft on the landing pad. This could breed tension between players where more than 2 players are competing for landing pads though. What are some approaches I can take to resolve this, which avoid forcing player behavior as much as possible, but still ensure gameplay is predictable and reliable? Specifically I'm looking for what key issues an answer takes into account and how it resolves them. If you're drawing experience from something that's already been put into practice and already has tangible results, those results would be a wonderful addition to your answer.


Progression in a Sandbox Game (to xp or not to xp) I'd like to know the strengths and weaknesses of different progression methods through a game (or a part of a game), where they're suited best, and where they should never appear. I have several subsystems a player can progress through in a project I'm working on and I'd like to be able to work out if any of them would benefit from tallying xp. Not sure why this is on hold, I'm asking about the concrete merits of things not simply asking everyone for their favourite?? At the moment the player's character becomes more powerful by equipping better and better gear as they progress through randgen levels however they like, but are given clear indication that going in a particular direction will increase difficulty and the quality of items. I'm not sure in what circumstances I would add in xp for fighting monsters, or which I'd have the monsters drop good gear, or parts to make good gear out of. On top of that I have a magic system and a crafting system that I'm considering progressing though with xp but I wouldn't want to implement it if the side effects don't suit the rest of the game. As far as I know games usually progress in the following ways, often in combination Level by Level Like in old school Mario, you go through a sequence of levels which become more difficult and require you to master the basic techniques of game play. Power by Power You gain new abilities which makes it possible to access more and more difficult content. Metroid comes to mind for this. Xp Growth Your stats increase every level so you can fight the harder mobs in further content. You may or may not be able to choose where your stats go. Xp Talent Tree You get points to put into learning new skills, often from increasingly better pools of skills. Item by Item Equipment determines what content can be accessed next, either because the item unlocks something (including methods of transportation), or it increases player abilities such that they can survive certain areas. The distinct thing about items is that they can be removed from a player at pretty much any time. A grappling hook that can't be removed is a Power, not an Item. Quest by Quest Like Level by Level, only what triggers the newer content isn't getting to the end of a stage, it's the completing the requirements of a quest (explicitly stated or not). Zelda would be an example of a game that does both LbyL and QbyQ. Each dungeon is a level and between levels you have to do a bunch of little quests to unlock the next level. Score You just rack up points like in pinball, it doesn't really have an effect on the game. If you have a clear idea of the underlying purpose of these or others, I'd like to hear it! At the moment I only know that these systems exist, but only vaguely what they're for. As an aside, I'm also interested in your thoughts on how to display progression to a player. When is it best to give them numbers, if ever? Are visual demonstrable displays preferred for certain things? What is the function of doing it one way or another?


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?


Future of Julia in game development industry I read in many posts that Julia is faster than many languages especially C , What's the future of Julia in game development industry ? Will it replace all legacy C ?


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


Where to hire a scenario writer for a small interactive story game? I need a scenario for a small dialog based game interactive story. The game would be used as an example to be shipped with a middleware tool we're developing. I would like to buy an existing story (it should be dynamic of course with branching dialogs etc.), or hire someone to write a new one. Please advise, where to go to find such person service? We're based in Russia, so getting a talented enough native English writer locally is a bit of a problem. Update To be extra clear We must get all necessary rights to reuse the story and make a derived work (i.e. the game we're talking about) from it. This is a commercial product. Borrowing someone else's work at random and using it just not going to work. WARNING Please do not post "I can do it" answers here. This is not a job board! You will get downvoted and your answer will be deleted. If you really want to contact me, look into my profile.


Removing ads but maintaining opt in video ads I have a game for iOS that will show advertisements. One form of advertisement offered is a rewarded video (a video that the user can watch by choice). This is actually an important aspect of the game because watching these videos allows the user to continue playing after running out of a certain resource (balls, in this case). Now, the user can remove the advertisements via In App Purchase. Question Is there anything wrong with keeping the rewarded videos as an option for the user, even though they paid to remove ads? If I disallow the rewarded videos, the user will lose a really useful feature of the game, but I'm worried about initializing the advertisement SDK and therefore tracking users who probably think they've disabled any tracking for advertisements. Thank you for your thoughts!


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


How to evaluate a user against optimal performance? I have trouble coming up with a system of assigning a rating to player's performance. Well, technically there is is a trivial rating system, but I don't like it because it would mean assigning negative scores, which I think most players will be discouraged by. The problem is that I only know the ideal number of actions to get the desired result. The worst case is infinite number of actions, so there is no obvious scale. The trivial way I referred to above is to take score ( optimal moves players moves), with ideal score being zero. However, psychologically people like big numbers. No one wants to win by getting a mark of 0. I wonder if there is a system that someone else has come up with before to solve this problem? Essentially I wish to score the players based on How close they've come to the ideal solution. Different challenges will have different optimal number of actions, so the scoring system needs to take that into account, e.g. Challenge 1 max 10 points, Challenge 2 max 20 points. I don't mind giving the players negative scores if they've performed exceptionally badly, I just don't want all scores to be lt 0


Drawing to create game drafts Man, I'm really bad at drawing... I feel myself really ashamed because I cannot draw even a little nice sword... ( The problem is, on game development (I will be on the programming part, relax!) I will need to explain some game ideas to game artists, like "I need that city like this" or "that character needs to have that look and feel". My idea is, I really need some BASIC skills on drawing some draft of what I'm thinking... I'm bad in pen paper drawing and photoshop corel drawing, but I'm convicted to learn photoshop or corel to draft something... Someone has passed that problem? What you recommend?


Complex, yet simple crafting system model I'm working on some arcade shooter slasher, and the main logline is "Kick'em with everything you want". There's not so many enemies in GDD, main focus is on tons of weapons and gadgets to cause mayhem. To get weapon, you need to craft it, and now crafting system looks simple, like 1) You got three slots for weapon parts (like A, B, C) 2) You collect misc weapon parts, and when you got atleast one for every slot, you can craft a weapon (for example, if you got A1, B1, B2, B3 and C1, you can craft such models A1B1C1, A1B2C1, A1B3C1) As for me, this crafting system is too simple, because weapon parts will just fall from the top of screen, often enough. That's why I'm thinking about adding some more crafting system levels, like resources (collect 10 scrap pieces to make part A1 or C3), etc. My question is How can i add some more complex, still simple, transparent levels in crafting system? upd. For example, in Minecraft or Terraria, first 5 10 crafting recipies quite transparent and simple IMHO. But then it turns into huge mess to understand, how to craft this or that (for example, fishing rod) upd. Okay, somehow i've figured out mechanics like this 1) Player gather resources (while playing game, automatic gathering from loot) 2) When there's enough resources to craft some weapon part, dedicated icon flashes, so player can craft weapon part in one click (automatic crafting) 3) Having several weapon parts, player can adjust different parts to create weapon (manual crafting) I think, this will be complex and simple enough, now over weighted by to many buttons and receipes, still, enough of freedom and manual creativity, trying to mix this and that.


What are good, simple action games action RPGs to emulate? There is standard advice for game development to start off emulating simple games you know and build up from there. Which makes me wonder. What are good examples of action games or action RPGs that are very simple to begin with to try and emulate? What is necessary and what is superfluous? Please link to the game's site (or Wikipedia page if it's defunct) if you can, and only one game per answer please.


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?


Where do you search look for game developers for an indie game startup? I just recently saw stackoverflow had a game dev sister site so here I am, wondering if you experienced fellows know where one can search look for game developers for an indie game startup? In other words I have a game idea which I've written down with as much detail as possible (so anyone else can understand how it works) and now I'm looking for a heavy php programmer with whom to pair up in order to go from idea to reality. I'm a front end interface designer and an intermediate programmer. I recognize my project requires heavy programming skills which I do not have as of today ) So, what websites, communities or places do you recommend I go look into? Where do good programmers interested in indie games go look for projects if they don't have their own? Thanks in advance G.Campos


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


How to prevent players from getting lost during the onboarding phase of an RPG? I've created a new RPG and tested it with some players. They like it, but get lost at certain points. For example, I'm using hotkeys to open modals, T to talk, and other buttons that do various things. Moreover, some of the quests aren't entirely clear. To fix this, I'm trying to think of a good onboarding approach. I'm implementing three methods for onboarding 1) Cutscenes The cutscenes, especially the opening scene, will give the backstory and explain where they are 2) The NPC dialog Through conversations with NPCs, they will give hints as to what you should do. Right now, I include, somewhat awkwardly, things like "Hi there, I'm Bob. You can press T to talk". 3) Onscreen Tooltips These blink on screen until the player completes the current onboarding task. For example, the tooltip disappears when the player clicks their minimap I'm looking for a more cohesive strategy for onboarding users to the game, or good tutorials for this. Two things I'm weary of are I don't want to be overbearing with help, and am attempting a good Discovery Phase to let the player explore. I don't want the player to leave the game out of frustration with being lost I've seen a lot of techniques for various game genres, and even things like Google apps, where they have a glowing choice for the user to click on. I'm a sole developer, and some of these techniques seem quite complicated to implement. Thanks!


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.


Where can I find sources on how many people play on silent etc. This is probably more a problem with me being unable to find statistics which i am absolutely certain must exist in some form How many people play with the sound off on when playing browser games or very casual mobile games. Because in my experience nobody, but that is too subjective. The question i want to answer for myself Is it worth adding sounds to my game. But I dont want to base that decision off of my personal experience (sound is always off), but rather some cold hard fact. They must exist somewhere, someone must have compiled that data, but I cant find it anywhere...


Is there a concept of "pasted on theme" in video games? I've prototyped an idea and so far it's quite fun to play. However, it's still abstract and uses placeholder art. I've been thinking about a theme story to add to the game, but I don't want to make it too obvious it was added almost as an afterthought. There's a concept of quot pasted on theme quot within the board game community which basically refers to a game which is easy to reskin without redesigning some of the mechanics. I was wondering how big of an issue this is with video games (indie games in particular of course) and anything else I could do about a story for my game.


Implementing traffic conditions in TORCS I am working on a project about "Effects of Traffic conditions and Track Complexity on Car Driving Behavior". Is it possible to implement traffic in TORCS, or should I use another car simulator? By the word "traffic" I mean there are cars running on both tracks in both directions and I can detect the distances, direction and speed of these cars. Depending on this information I can decide whether I should slow down, speed up and calculate the correct timing to overtake.


Is story more important or the gameplay more important? Read this Slate article. In particular, the following struck me When he looks at video games from a critical distance, Bissell is concerned mainly with their lack of narrative meaning. Games ask us to save the princess, save the country, save the world, save ourselves but no one plays games to achieve those ends. We play for the puzzle, for the physics, for the sense of being embedded in a fully realized world. Indeed, for me, the quot story quot usually seems like filler, even in games like Grand Theft Auto and RDR Red Dead Redemption , whose stories are smarter than the rest of the video game pack. RDR begins and ends every mission with cleverly scripted movielike quot cut scenes quot that provide some explanation for why your character is doing what he's doing but the game also lets you skip the scenes, which I usually elect to do. Thus I can't really explain why my character is doing what he's doing. The real answer is he's doing it because I am making him do it, and I am making him do it only because I am having fun. quot This is one of the most suspect things about the game form, quot Bissell writes. quot A game with an involving story and poor gameplay cannot be considered a successful game, whereas a game with superb gameplay and a laughable story can see its spine bend from the weight of many accolades and those who praise the latter game will not be wrong. quot What's the solution to this quandary? Should games invest more in story, in an attempt to bring us narratives that are on the level of those of the other popular arts? Or should games abandon story is the video game, as a form, simply incompatible with traditional concepts of narrative, and must game designers instead find other ways to invest their creations with lasting meaning? As if Bissell's uncertainty is echoing throughout the game industry, there has arisen a tendency to make many big budget blockbuster games heavily story driven. Even Starcraft II has a fairly story driven campaign. Is a game without a high quality narrative bereft of true value and meaning? Must games have any meaning at all in the literary sense in order to be considered worthwhile forms of entertainment? What about emergent narratives, where the player has a decisive role in determining the plot (ideally much more decisive than we've seen in any games so far released)? If games do not need a higher literary meaning, do they at least need to have some lasting emotional significance for the player? Those are just some thoughts that the article raised. The real question can be summed up like this what is the true value of a video game? Is a game to be valued on its dynamic interaction with the player, on its ability to present a narrative in a way other mediums cannot, or on its ability to provide simple pleasure?


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


Cartesian Coordinates Layout The way cartesian coordinations are presented and used is kinda confusing. When working with 2D the vertical axis is Y, though when working with 3D the vertical axis is Z and Y becomes the "depth" axis. Basically I'm thinking the correct way, and best way would be to use the layout of axis. Though Blender (3D modelling program) and other program, a lot games, present the axis in the "weird order" (my opinion) Also if you read on Wikipedia about cartesian coordinates, your are presented with that layout of axis. Wikipedia Cartesian Coordinates Is there any specific or logical reason for this "flip" of axis?


Can I use a translate function to implement a viewport? I read this great question and its accompanying great answer about rendering a viewport in a top down 2D game As for actually drawing the objects the camera can "see", you now draw all objects relative to the camera's world coordinates. To compute an object's screen position relative to the camera, simply do int screenX, screenY screen position of the object being drawn screenX object.x camera.x screenY object.y camera.y After thinking about this, it would be really invasive to change every place I render to run this object.coord camera.coord equation first. I'm wondering if this could be accomplished in one non invasive step that translates the coordinate system first. I'm rendering on the html5 canvas and this translate function says Moves the origin point of the context to (x, y). I'm having trouble visualizing this though. Does this mean I simply plug ( camera.x, camera.y) into the function? Should I use a translate function to render a viewport or is there a good reason to apply the equation on every thing I render?


Approaches on 2D top down track racing visualisation I'm considering writing a very simple management style game with the theme being motorsport racing. I've got a good idea how to do the 'management side', but the issue I'm having is how to visually render cars and move on a track (something a bit like) The key points (keeping it simple) the user won't control the vehicle directly, they are the 'manager' (think football manager) they can decide on a strategy but cannot control the vehicle the car should stay on track (visually) they may 'crash' (along with other events) though the speed it goes around the track is determined by vehicle performance a car will be aware of other near by cars around the track for example, if they're about to be overtaken, they may actually do a slower lap as they are defending they may collide, along with other events My initial thoughts are there are two key design elements here, the track and the car. The track a track is composed of many segments each segment is stored in an array a segment (I'm not entirely sure here) but one thing it might contain is a 2D array (From this (https gamedev.stackexchange.com questions 149966 approaches on 2d top view racing game track design) answer gave an approach of using multi dimensional arrays) d d x x x d d d d d r r r d d d d d r r r d d d d d r r r d d d d d r r r d d d d d r r r d d d d d r r r d d d d d e e e d d d d d x x x d d d d d r r r d d d d d d r r r d d d d d d r r r e d d d d r r r e d d d d d d r e d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d Above is a straight and a 90 degree corner x exit, e entry, r racetrack and d dirt. Maybe I could create a bunch of these and create a track. Or maybe a simpler version where I define just an entry and exit d e d d r d d e d d x d d r e d d d The simplified version where I define an entry e and exit x. I can add additional points r and then construct a curve straight line based on the x, e and r coordinates? My idea is that the vehicle will then move across each segment and I can calculate the time it takes to complete that segment. I can then add up all segments which will give me the lap time. With this approach, I can also check the previous current next segment to determine if there are other vehicles it needs to defend attack against. The car store all vehicles in an array each vehicle will always be in a segment speed it completes the segment is determined by its performance (and segment characteristics) vehicle can 'see' if there are other vehicles in previous current next segment and decide whether to overtake defend. I think I could make this work, but I'd be really interested to know if there are better simpler approach bearing in mind it's mostly a visualization and the speed and events are determined by my program.


How to break the feeling of busywork in a game I don't know if this topic has been explored before but in a handful of games I've played there comes a point where trying to explore everything, doing sidequests, or even trying to get gear starts feeling like busywork. That sort of feeling makes me less interested in the game, and I usually wind up either just stopping playing altogether or just breezing through the rest of the game just to get it finished and out of the way. This feeling seems to happen mostly with RPGs from my own personal experiences. How do you prevent activities the player can do (sidequests, exploration, item crafting, etc.) from feeling like artificial time padding or busywork?


Creating an illusion of stress and danger I'm currently experimenting with an adventure game setting where at some point the game is quite calm and the player has to solve puzzles and at some point there are enemies or environmental traps. I don't want to have any surprising danger events coming out of nowhere that would scare the player, so I would like to build up the players' tension before a section of the game starts which will contain multiple "player killing" obstacles (may they be enemies, or the ground falling apart..). My sound artist made some really good music and sound effects to slowly build up the tension, but game elements during this phase are missing. It's like the player is running from a puzzle zone to danger zone through a boring plain section. Beside sound, what are some generic ways to build up the players' tension? Can i aid with special Visuals, or do i have to improve the story or possibly invent some pre danger zone easy obstacles?


Other than the ESA are there other sources for demographic data? I'm pretty interested in seeing demographic data as I find them good targeting tools. But other than the ESA reports (free) and NPD numbers (paid) does anyone know any other sources for such data?


How can I handle the difficulty level between co op and single player? I'm working on an action adventure game, and I was considering adding a co op option. What I'm trying to decide is if when another player joins the game, if the game should get harder. On the one hand, I don't want the game to just get easier. On the other hand, I don't want to break continuity by making enemies suddenly stronger, eg I was able to take this down it two hits before, why does it take four all of the sudden. I do not want there to be an "AI co op" that comes with you in single player, I think that would make the game worse since it would detract from player agency. How can I handle this? How can I keep the game challenging when a second player joins in?


Is it possible to design a multiplayer game which can be played from different devices? I want to design a online multiplayer game for all gaming devices e.g. Desktop PC, Internet browser, Android phones, Android tablets, iPhone, iPad, XBOX 360 etc. Now my main requirement is that, I want all devices can be used to play the game in multiplayer mode together i.e. One player can be connected using PC another using Android phone and other may be with iPhone or iPad. My doubts are How to make all devices to connect to common game server? What will be the logic for graphics and texture because all devices screen will be of different aspect ratio?


Appropriate database schema for heroes' skills in a Tower Defense game? In a Tower Defense game, each hero (or character) has some skills. Each skill has some quot chance of appearance quot (CoA for short) when attacking enemies and if appeared it has some quot hit accuracy quot (i.e. hit on enemies) (HA for short) and has effects on the enemies (if hit by the skill) (EoH for short). Examples Skill 1 Frost 1, CoA 50 , HA 100 , EoH (1) slow enemy down for 4s and (2) yield 200 damage points. Skill 2 Frost 2, CoA 100 , HA 50 , EoH (1) make enemy frozen for 8s. I first tried to breakdown skills into quot atomic quot effects and come up with tables as below All looks good? But now we want to update Skill 1 a bit to make it more complicated Skill 1 Frost 1, CoA 50 , HA 100 , EoH (1) slow enemy down by 40 for 4s and (2) yield 200 damage points. (Please pay attention to the 40 here!) Or even coming up with more complicated skills Skill 3 Frost 3, CoA 20 , HA 100 , EoH (1) frozen enemy for the first 4s then slow enemy down by 50 for next 4s and (2) yield 200 more damage points. Skill 4 Frost 4, CoA 10 , attack enemy 3 times continuously, each time HA 50 , EoH (1) frozen enemy for the first 2s then slow enemy down by 50 for next 2s and (2) yield 400 more damage points. Each effect now has more parameters to be specified which makes my current schema not fit anymore. Please help deal with this!


Implementing cheat safe loot algorithm at clientside I am developing a "city building" type of browser based flash flex game. I was checking some of the implementation of existing one of the popular games in facebook using decompilers. I noticed they have implemented the loot algorithm the client side and sending the loot item to the server which I think is not cheat safe. Knowing the fact that there are cheaters every where and it is easy to manipulate the messages and send the best loot always, is there any way we can counter this type of cheats? I dont have a concrete solution designed for it yet but I am thinking to track the drops by maintaining the loot history. So instead of mere updating the resources inventory, I will implement a logic which will compare the loot with history to see if the player is receiving the rare drops excessively and flag the user or take a smart decision (which I don't have yet) Or Is it a good idea to implement the loot algorithm in the server side? Since this is "city building" kind of game, where it will not have extensive user actions like in typical RPG games which can trigger loot events.


What are the common character animation techniques used in tile based hack slash games? I wonder what kind of animation techniques are used for creature and character animation in modern hack amp slash type tile based games? Keyframing for different actions may be one option. Skeletal framing may be another. But how about the physics? Or do they use a totally hybrid system of inverse kinematics supported with a skeleton,physics and mixed with interpolated keyframing for more realistic animations? If so, how and for what reasons? I can think of many different solutions for the issues below but I wonder what's used and best suited for issues like Walking or moving on an uneven terrain Combat interaction, combat physics and collisions Attaching rigid items to character and their iteractions ih physics world Soft body dynamics like hair, vegetation, clothes and fabric in line with animations and iteractions.


Finding next experience level using the square root? I recently asked this question on how to calculate a level based on experience Algorithm for dynamically calculating a level based on experience points? I am using the following calculation to determine the players level decimal experience 1829 decimal rawLevel (decimal)(.06 Math.Sqrt(experience)) decimal level Math.Floor(rawLevel) For my test, 1829 experience points equates to 2.56600857364117M, which I floor to level 2. My question is, how can I figure out how many points it would take to get to the next level based off of the calculation above? I know the next level is 3, so I would need to figure out how many points equate to level 3 so that I can find the difference. What formula would I use, given the constant .06 above? Update Solution int experience 150777 decimal rawLevel (decimal)(.06 Math.Sqrt(experience)) decimal level Math.Floor(rawLevel) decimal nextPoints (decimal)Math.Pow((double)(level 1) 0.06, 2)


Usage of standardized syntaxes in gaming yea or nay? TL DR Using CSS as an element in defining rulesets in Civ style turn based strategy games Madness or just plain old insanity? Real question Designing ruleset parse rules is a pain. Every single game out there seems to define its own ruleset for how rulesets are to be parsed (insofar as the game features customizable rulesets, of course). Is it time for the game dev. community to embrace standardized synatxes for rulesets? Is CSS a viable option for customizable games? Example Consider a Civ like with customizable rulesets how nice would it not be to be able to design rulesets as follows artillery era(modern) range 2 sprite url( isophex artillery.png) artillery era(classical) range 1 sprite url( isophex cannon.png)


How to determine the amount of experience needed for leveling up Related questions under this topic might include How should I base how much experience points it takes to get to the next level? What factors are involved in this? How do I keep the player not entertained long enough till he levels up? How can I vary the way the player gets experience points?


What should a game have in order to keep humans playing it? In many entertainment professions there suggestions, loose rules, or general frameworks one follows that appeal to humans in one way or another. For instance, many movies and books follow the monomyth. In video games I find many types of games that attract people in different ways. Some are addicted to facebook gem matching games. Others can't get enough of FPS games. Once in awhile, though, you find a game that seems to transcend stereotypes and appeals almost immediately to everyone that plays it. For instance, Plants Versus Zombies seems to have a very, very large demographic of players. There are other games similar in reach. I'm curious what books, blogs, etc there are that explore these game types and styles, and tries to suss out one or more popular frameworks styles that satisfy people, while keeping them coming back for more.


Portrait and Landscape Design I have a turn based game that is built with HTML 5 gaming framework and runs completely fine in Landscape mode. What I am trying to figure out is how to make the game run fine in both portrait and landscape mode such that even when the game is running and player rotates the screen to landscape the game runs perfectly or the game transition between landscape and portrait mode smoothly. I can capture the orientation change event which is fired, my question is how should I design the game for both orientations. Currently, I am trying to create a common file which then calls my separate orientation layouts created for the game but is this the right way? Thanks


How to Store AI Knowledge about the Game World for AI Decision Making I have a game world with a fair amount of AI that have some Senses, like vision, hearing, touch, smell, etc. But I'm not sure how to put that information in a single place for the individual AI to then iterate over it and make a decision. For example, each sense (emitter and receiver) currently returns a structure called a Stimulus with information like position, direction, stimulus type (sight, sound, smell, etc), npc type (human, animal, monster, etc), and so on. And currently, the monster AI just have a hard coded hierarchy of preference touch (e.g., damage events) sight sound smell, so if you fire a gun it'll try to follow that noise but if he then sees you, he'll switch to tracking you visually and forget about the noise. However, this isn't very robust. It doesn't deal with repeated damage events or one player kiting or stale stimuli vs new stimuli very well. Ideally I'd want to use some sort of utility evaluation so that I can get more complex and dynamic behaviour out and I can fix edge cases where it feels like the AI isn't interacting right (e.g., ignoring stimuli that it shouldn't be). I'm not sure how to approach that implementation. Should I just have an array of every stimulus the AI encounters and loop over that every tick? But then how do I prune that list since it'd get very large very quickly and might contain really old stimuli (currently the AI only has one "target stimuli" and new stimuli go through that hierarchy of preference before being either discarded or replacing the target stimuli). (As a side note, this GDC Talk about Creating the Living, Breathing World of Hitman has provided some great information about how they deal with Knowledge, but I wasn't able to discern how they store it and iterate through multiple Knowledge fields of a single AI and so on). (I'd also love any advice on the Knowledge Stimulus data structure itself to be modular enough to hold different types of information, instead of having a bunch of unused fields say how a sound might need only type and direction, but a visual stimulus might only need type and position and so on)


Minimum Viable Product for RTS game? I'm in pre production on a strategy game and am trying to determine if the core gameplay will be fun. A good technique to determine this is to strip the game down to its minimum viable product (MVP) and see if that is fun. If the MVP isn't fun, then no amount of extra content or features will make it fun. I'm having difficulty determining the MVP for a strategy game as I'm a little too far into the weeds to see which of the many design features are core mechanics and which are unnecessary. Purely as an example, lets just say StarCraft2 is the strategy game I want to make. What would be the MVP for SC2 to prove out that its core gameplay is fun?


MMORPG Design Question Best idea for adding PvP(PlayerVsPlayer) in open world MMO? Brief Explanation of game Time Travel, one map, open world MMO called ChronoCraft. If you'd like to know more about the game, you're welcome to check out our twitter where we post some of our development https twitter.com Chrono Craft Here are the ideas so far 1 Safe Zones Pros People in major towns are safe and can fight when they leave the safety of the town Cons When dealing with NPC's and Quests(Non instance ones) outside of town, someone can kill you as you are talking to them 2 PvP Zones Pros Instead, areas of the map where PvP is possible is limited to the "wilderness" or dangerous areas(Anything that doesnt have Quest able NPCs) Cons Significantly reduces the area of allowable PvP areas 3 PvP Toggle Pros This allows players to turn on PvP mode in settings where only other PvP enabled players can fight eachother outside of Safe Zones (We would make it so if you are hit, you cant turn off PvP mode until a certain time to prevent people escaping death) Cons Ambushing is limited, because only the people who are ready to fight will have it enabled 4 Separate servers Pros Having a PvE server and a PvP server. Which makes it so the player decides what gameplay he wants. Cons Players cant bring items or money between servers so they may have to start from scratch if they change their mind on what type of server they like playing.(This is to protect the player economy from taking all the resources from one server and bringing them to another server) 5 Time Specific Pros When night falls, then PvP is enabled for everywhere outside a Safe Zone Cons For players wanting to avoid PvP they will be forced to stay in towns half the time which might get boring unless they do fun stuff like running a shop or restaurant. 6 Special Days Pros When there is lighting and rain, PvP is enabled which will happen every few minecraft days in the game. Allowing PvPers to fight outside of safe zones. And a HUD display will make this clear. Cons Players wanting to avoid PvP will have to stay in town during the inclement weather, which they might not enjoy. 7 Level Specific Pros Only players with a similar skill level will be able to fight eachother. So new players dont have to worry about pros slaughtering them early on. Cons It would be hard to fight along friends unless you're the same skill level. "John help me kill this guy" "Sorry cant, he is too low skill for me" 8 Arenas Pros Confines the fight to specific spot like a colosseum Cons Nearly impossible to wage huge fights like 100v100 (Colosseum will make it into the game at some point, but should it be the only PvP option) 9 PvP Everywhere Pros Either (A)Players can figure out their own police protection system or (B) NPC guards in major towns spawn and nearly guarantee the death of a killer in the town. Cons Has alot of potential to be annoying if players dont want to get killed in the middle of business in towns. Might also turn away less PvP focused players. What do you think is the best? Can I mitigate the cons for the one you choose? Is there a better idea entirely?


Cartesian Coordinates Layout The way cartesian coordinations are presented and used is kinda confusing. When working with 2D the vertical axis is Y, though when working with 3D the vertical axis is Z and Y becomes the "depth" axis. Basically I'm thinking the correct way, and best way would be to use the layout of axis. Though Blender (3D modelling program) and other program, a lot games, present the axis in the "weird order" (my opinion) Also if you read on Wikipedia about cartesian coordinates, your are presented with that layout of axis. Wikipedia Cartesian Coordinates Is there any specific or logical reason for this "flip" of axis?


Designing Drops system How and where chance of drops are defined? Just found a related topic but I have different extended questions I was wondering how the implement the drop system. I have to start designing the DB model for this so I was wondering whether what I am thinking is a good practice or not. My game is like "City building" kind of browser based game (Flex Flash app) with PHP and MySQL in the backend. In my game, like in any other games, there are chance based drop rate. I want to design the drop system such a way that I can easily configure What item(s) can be dropped from which game element What is the percent chance (probability) of getting a drop (a 100 meaning there will be some drop always) What percent chance of getting a specific drop. Here I define for each item (if can drop various items) what is the chace of drop, 90 to very frequent, 5 to very rare I am wondering how the probability is determined? It might sound very noobish but just want to confirm does it mean roll a random number and compare with the odds we defined? If I am not wrong this is good for determining "how much to drop" but not for "what to drop" Example If we say drop 1 10 coins or 20 50 coins. I will simply call a random() function and generate a random numbed from the desired range. Now for other example Drop one of Bullets (95 ), Empty Gun (4 ), Loaded Gun (1 ) If I roll a random number range from 1 100 and compare with probability I defined so, a number between 1 95 drops bullet, and a number between 96 99 drops empty gun and a loaded gun when it generates 100? Is this how it has to be done? or is there a better way? Update Removed 2nd question about hack safety


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


Player fatigue for tablets? I'm thinking about making games for tablets. Coming from a PC console background, I'm keenly aware of the huge differences in the user interfaces, and that I need to design it with the target platform in mind. One aspect I'm worried about is player fatigue. The input devices used on PCs and consoles keyboards and game controllers are optimized for extended play and have mature, ergonomic designs. Most seasoned players can easily use them for an hour, clocking in thousands of key button presses, without suffering from fatigue. Designers can depend on this when designing the user experience, with consequences ranging from size length of levels, steps required to execute commands, pace of the game and many more. What about touch screen tablets? Do players become fatigued faster, or are unable to execute as many taps swipes per unit of time? If so, are there any resources or guidelines about this matter?


Programmers Designers working with artists Expanding on this question, what information do I need to communicate my artistic goals for a game to a professional artist? Assuming I'm an indie programmer. and I've found or hired an artist to for my game, how to I go about setting a template or a brief for the look and feel of my game?


Why do games have consumables? Thinking along the lines of this question, and the too awesome to use trope in general. Why do game designers want to include consumable items in their games? Mortal Kombat 11 got me thinking... Why include consumables that give you an edge in battle at all? I m looking for concrete answers for what it is that consumables add to gameplay, whether it be about those that one can buy with real money, or those that you just get by playing the game, or whether they are available in limited or unlimited quantities.


MMORPG game balancing I've seen a couple of examples of some game balancing techniques in books yet they are not comprehensive and not particularly aimed at MMORPGs but I'm looking for practical examples of game balancing techniques for MMORPGs. I am interested to know if anyone has documented the techniques used in popular games with proven success in this area. Ideally, any resource would cover most common types of stats and include layman mathematical models or techniques used to balance game mechanics found in advanced MMORPGs (I know it's a clich , but WoW style) Any help would be great!


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


Independent HTML5 Physics Game Any Feedback? I've been independently developing a physics based HTML5 game. I haven't used any libraries or engines all the code, including the physics, is my own. It is free for a while on the Chrome Web Store and I was hoping that I could get some feedback on it. You can get it for Chrome here https chrome.google.com webstore detail dbnmkpcomailjochphnmfklofkmgenci. I know this is not a normal question, but I'm happy for answers to be abstracted generalized for broader use. Im asking here because I don't know anyone else personally who does this stuff. Any thoughts, comments or ideas you might have would be greatly appreciated! The physics system is written in JavaScript and works by setting up the differential equations of motion (plus a few conditions) and evaluating them numerically using the Euler method. The graphics are done through the HTML5 canvas and the music is done through the audio element. (Said music is in the public domain by the way). You can see the code by going to VIew View Source in Chrome.


It is worth adding 'futuristic' features to our game, or should we put our focus elsewhere? I'm lead programmer in a medium sized indie game studio. This is our first game as a team. We're working on a futuristic FPS game, with a profit sharing buisness plan. Anyway, we have some very good programmers, who have the ability to create never seen before features (true realistic fluids, procedural mesh destruction, procedural skyboxes, etc.) And I'm wondering is there any point to implementing these things? They take a long time, but look brilliant. We're aiming for a 12 month development cycle. So should we do this, or just make a standard game.


Why do games have hats? I noticed that a lot of games tend to have hats. I was wondering why? Is it some sort of tradition to add hats to your games? What makes this trend so popular in game development?


Designing for visually impaired gamers Globally the number of people of all ages visually impaired is estimated to be 285 million, of whom 39 million are blind. World Health Organisation, 2010. (That's 4.2 and 0.6 of the world population.) Most videogames put a strong emphasis on visuals in their content delivery. Visually impaired gamers are largely left out. How do I design a game to be accessible to visually impaired gamers?


Realtime multi player game design principles for Node.js I've been reading the Valve article on multi player networking which has been adapted from Yahn Bernier's 2001 paper called Latency Compensating Methods in Client Server In game Protocol Design and Optimization. I'm making a realtime multi player game using a node.js server connected to clients through socket.io and I have a few questions regarding the principles detailed below Entity Interpolation Interpolation prevents the jittery motion this would ordinarily lead to by buffering server updates then playing them back with the gaps smoothly interpolated between. It can also protect against glitches caused by packet loss. Client Side Prediction Prediction is the notion of the client predicting the effects of the local player's actions without waiting for the server to confirm them. An entity's predicted state is tested against server commands as they arrive until either a match or a mis match is detected. Lag Compensation Lag compensation is the notion of the server using a player's latency to rewind time when processing user input , in order to see what the player saw when the command was sent. In combination with prediction, lag compensation can help to combat network latency to the point of almost eliminating it from the perspective of an attacker. Do the principles apply to TCP as they do to UDP and would there be any differences in implementation? I can see that the entity interpolation would not need to protect against packet loss but thats about it. Can I even communicate between a server and web browser and vice versa using UDP and Node.js? Since the paper is over a decade old are these principles still in use or has other technology appeared? Any help would be much appreciated.


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


Balance advantage of having the first turn I'm developing a game in which two players compete for area domination. Each player can play four moves per turn, ideally conquering four tiles. Edit Here a little more detail on the mechanics Each player is given the same amount of cards (about 20). Each card has a value. The board consists of 4x5 tiles which you conquer by placing a card on it. If there already is a card on the tile, your can still conquer the tile but your card must have a higher value than the card on the tile. The problem is that player two could technically (almost) always just undo player ones moves by conquering the same areas immediately. Of course this isn't fun at all and no human player would play this way, but I'm working on implementing an AI opponent, and I've seen the above happen a few times Player one conquers four tiles with pretty low value cards player two immediately takes them player one takes them back again because not doing so would be a disadvantage player two takes them back again etc... So as you can see, this is definitely not the best strategy as it becomes ridiculously expensive to possess the tiles of interest, but there are strategies or situations in which you might play like this. How should I balance this? Are there any common design solutions for this problem? (Having player one play more moves in the first turn would give player one a huge advantage as it would allow him her to conquer highly strategic areas in the first turn. (Unfortunately, the "immediately undo player ones moves" strategy is actually not mathematically bad for player two, but that's another issue))


How to avoid players getting lost in and or bored by the meta game? Yesterday, I noticed something that I had never noticed consciously before, but which had "ruined" more or less all games that I have ever played The longer you play a game, the more you get lost in and bored by the meta game. What I mean is that the longer you play, the more you know the meta game. Once you know the meta game by heart, you basically stop playing the game and instead only play the meta game anymore. Here are a few examples from different genres to show what I mean DotA In the beginning, DotA is super fun, although you totally suck at it. You learn new heros, you are happy when you are able to buy an expensive item and so on. After being "pro" in DotA, you basically only play the meta game anymore You pick exactly the hero that can counter the enemy and play exactly a perfect meta game for your hero (e.g., go to jungle until you are fat, time creep spawns to stack, and so on). You know basically exactly at which time you will be able to buy which item and you execute this. You no longer play the game, you just play the meta game. You execute a well thought out choreography, which you perfected by executing it 100 or more times. Eventually this gets boring! Anno XXXX In the beginning, you build an island and have to master more and more challenges to keep you citizens happy. Cool! Once you know the meta game the whole game becomes a "Oh, I need these 10 resources in these proportions, then the people are happy. I build a fleet and capture the enemy or keep on playing until my island is full". Cities Skylines (or any Sim City) In the beginning, it is fun to master what your people need. In the end, you know exactly what they need, so it becomes more or less a burden E.g., for each new residential district, I need a police station, a fire station, garbage incineration plant, crematory, a hospital, I connect everything to the highway, add a subway station and add bus lines. Done. Lame. It starts feeling totally mechanic. I no longer feel like building a real city. I feel like building a mathematically simulation of a city and just responding to optimize all parameters for this simulation. Civilizations A super nice game to explore in the beginning! So many technologies, just wow! In the end I know exactly which technology to develop when. I have a more or less complete ordering among the technologies. I know where exactly to place the next city and which units to build. Heck, I think I could even write an AI that does more than 95 of the things I do, since everything has become so mechanic. I could go on forever. Almost all games have this. For some players, this is where the game gets really cool. Some players want to play the meta game! But for others, including me, it gets boring. I want to feel like playing a game, like exploring. Not optimizing a numerical simulation. So, when designing a game, how can you avoid that this will happen? Is it possible to hide the meta game to such an extent that the player no longer feels it, even when playing the game for long.


Removing ads but maintaining opt in video ads I have a game for iOS that will show advertisements. One form of advertisement offered is a rewarded video (a video that the user can watch by choice). This is actually an important aspect of the game because watching these videos allows the user to continue playing after running out of a certain resource (balls, in this case). Now, the user can remove the advertisements via In App Purchase. Question Is there anything wrong with keeping the rewarded videos as an option for the user, even though they paid to remove ads? If I disallow the rewarded videos, the user will lose a really useful feature of the game, but I'm worried about initializing the advertisement SDK and therefore tracking users who probably think they've disabled any tracking for advertisements. Thank you for your thoughts!


How to compare different states of my game? (rpg) I'm working on a rpg, the battle system. I want to compare different scenario with each other. For example, what if I play move A then move B ? or two times move A ? or ...? I'm using a tree structure to generate all possible scenario that can happen during the battle. There is no movement involved, I'm using a battle system as in FF7, only skill choice matters. 4vs4 units Trick is, the battle is turn based but not static. There is an Action Point bar for each unit (filling at different speed based on the unit's stats) and the unit with the most Ap (only if 100) can play. If no unit is 100, a "turn" will happend and all unit will gain some AP based on their speed. If no unit can play, a new turn will happen...until a unit is 100 ap. Each skills takes a different amount a AP to use. At turns 0 for example, we may have a unit with 140 AP that will play two times in a row for 2 actions of 20 AP each. Then other units at 100 AP may play. It means that when I'm running a simulation of all possible outcome of a battle for my AI, I will have states (node in the tree), that will have a number a turns very different from other and from nodes at the same depth. I dont know how to compare these nodes at all. I was using Hp at first, but it is not enought. To prove it, consider the example 1 vs 1 match. Unit A (opponent of AI) has only 1 move, a small attack that requieres 20 ap. Unit B (AI) has two moves a small attack that takes 40 ap (and overall hit for very low damage compared to the opponent attack) and a second move that does nothing but consume 20 ap and that move can only be used during the 1st turn. I will then have to compare two states State 1 AI use its attack . Opponent his attack. Units are at 60 80 ap respectively. 20 game turns passes and they are now at 80 100 ap. Opponent use his attack. 20 game turs passes and they are at 100 100 again and we are at turn 40. State 2 AI use his move that does nothing. Opponent his attack. Units are at 80 80 ap. 20 games turns passes, they are now at 100 100 and we are at turns 20. If I compare only HP, In state 1, AI will have an overall score a lower than in state 2 since it got attacked twice in state 1 and 1 times only in state 2. If I only compare by Hp difference between AI amp its opponenent, I would choose state 2 since AI lost less Hp than in state 1. Running the simulation after state 1 and 2 will continue to show the same difference since after that point, both unit can only use one attack. In the end, it makes my AI choose a stupid move because she thinks she is less likely to loose selecting it. Granted both move will eventually result in the defeat of the AI since its main attack is weak but I'd like my AI to nonetheless select as its first move, her attack skill and not a skill that does nothing. I've tried weithing the overall gradient of score between the root state and the state I'm simulating by the number of turns but it does not work in all cases (it greatly depends on the number of turns and the difference between the root). I was thinking of adding Ap ratio to my evaluation of states but in that example, we can see that in State 1 amp 2, units are at the same AP anyway so it doesnt provide extra informations. Anyone got ideas on how to compares my states from different turns ?


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


What is the design rationale behind melee retaliations in turn based games? I've seen quite a lot of turn based games in which melee attacks on another unit cause the attacked units to also damage the attacking unit, while ranged attacks do not suffer from this "retaliation" mechanic. Examples include the Heroes of Might and Magic series, the Civilization series, the new King's Bounty series, and more. Is there a specific design reason for this? What's the rationale behind giving the attacked unit an extra attack, which doesn't cost it its turn? And why are ranged attacks excluded from retaliation?


What is the design rationale behind hard content that's limited to only a couple attempts per week? There is currently a lot of discussion in the World of Warcraft playerbase about a recently added feature Horrific Visions. Visions are personal areas you can enter alone or with a handful of players and have 5 objectives with increasing difficulty plus additional difficulty options. The details aren't that important, but the core is that these Visions require careful planning of resources and time if you want to progress the harder difficulties, both during the visions themselves and in how you earn the right to complete a Vision. In return for completing these Visions, you can earn increasingly better gear based on difficulty (though repeated gear rewards decline in quality) as well as upgrades for an item you need against the final bosses of the raid that came in the same patch. Now, usually in games that have really hard content you're supposed to defeat, there is no limit in how many attempts you can do, or the limit is sufficiently high that it makes no real difference. However, this isn't the case in Visions. Visions require you to buy an item to make an attempt, and this item is so costly that even if you log in every day and do all the content that rewards the items you need to buy this item, you can at most earn 4 copies of the item per week. There is also incentive to save these tokens for later weeks because later upgrades require you to complete increasingly more runs, which you can speed up by not using additional tokens in weeks where you don't need them. This is what many people see as the biggest problem with these Visions. They're hard content, but you have only a couple attempts per week and you need to make them count. So there isn't really a safe way to practise them so you can learn how they work and what the best way to do them is. If you mess up and you don't do enough to earn the upgrade token mentioned above, it's a huge potential loss and you fall behind other players who did manage to complete them. I'm trying to understand possible design rationale behind this. I don't usually come across this design element in games, and I can't even remember another game with similar design, especially for such a core feature of the content update. in other hard game content, Soulsborne games don't really restrict you in attempts, and Roguelikes actually are built around immediately starting anew when you fail, again without real limitations. AFAIK neither genre really limits you in how often you can try them. And it has been years since Blizzard last put a hard limit on how many attempts you were allowed for the hardest content, especially such a low amount. What can be potential design rationale behind putting hard content behind a restrictive attempt limit?


What is the point in using API such as Open GL or DirectX when there are game engines? I was wondering why today programmers place so much emphasis on API like DirectX, and even OpenGl. As far as I know, you'd need thousands of lines of code to make a simple 3D game using one of the aforementioned. But with game engines like Unity, the process is simplified and you can pretty much drag around shapes to create the graphics in lieu of programming it. So what I wanted to know why is knowing APIs DirectX more preferable than being knowledgeable in Unity, other than the fact that with an API you can code it to be portable on other systems. To me it's like choosing Assembly over a high level language like C. Sure, with assembly I'll really understand what's happening at machine level, but it's take a lot longer to write programs using it and it would be a lot harder to debug.


How to deal with (bad?) player suggestions Every game which builds a community while still being in active development will soon be confronted with players who post suggestions for new features on its forum. Most of these suggestions, however Go into a completely different direction than where you want your game to go Would require far too much effort for the benefit they could have Are just plain awful What's a good way to deal with such suggestions? Should you tell the players honestly what you think about their suggestions so that they learn to make more constructive ones? Should you always try to maintain a positive and encouraging attitude towards player ideas, even when you secretly think that there is not a chance in hell you are following them? Should you just ignore any suggestions which you don't like?


Long distance walking and fast travel I'm developing a sort of social mmmo where people build an avatar and chat with people around them, carryout tasks together, and play team games. At the moment I have a product I want to release to beta testers but I only have 2 locations ready and they are quite far apart. I have a fast travel system in place where people can pay to ride the bus making any journey take a short period of time. If people run out of money they either have to earn more or make the walk themselves. In the beta would it be better to make the bus free, or have people walk the empty land to get to the other town if they run out of money? At the moment the land is just plain grass, hills, a river, and the odd tree with nothing of interest. The journey currently takes around 10 15 minutes to walk if you know the way.


Why is permadeath essential to a roguelike design? Roguelikes and roguelike likes (Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac) tend to share a number of game design elements Procedurally generated worlds Character growth by way of new abilities and powers Permanent death I can understand why starting with permadeath as a premise would lead you to the other ideas if you're going to be starting over a lot, you'll want variety in your experiences. But why do the first two elements imply a permadeath approach?


What do you do when you are at an impasse in the design phase? I own a small web dev shop, and in our down time, I plan on having my guys work on a game (I will be paying them anyway, right?). A few buddies and I started talking about this game, and have been going through the motions of talking designing it out. Only problem we are at an impasse, and can't seem to get passed it. The vote is at 50 50 . Compromising hasn't worked. I have though about just making an executive decision since I am funding the development design of the game, but I don't want to lose my friends support for the game, and their other opinions. I don't know what to do.


Toggle action for gamepad triggers, whilst being held down I'm doing a small fighting game project, as up now every button command in my map code is occupied with their designated functions. All except the triggers as up now they only have their basic "press n hold" actions assigned "sidestep" for the LT and "jump fly" for the RT . However there are still two more actions that I would like to implement to the triggers "if possible" they being, "Block" for the LT and "Fly up" for the RT . That being said, is it possible to somehow, add a "tap toggle action" to the triggers while they're still being held? If yes please let me know. For Tom Tsagk Yes, I'm trying to cause an event while holding down a button "this case a trigger", but 'not' by pressing another button for the execution, "since every other button is occupied doing something else". What I'm trying to attempt is when holding a trigger down, to be able to give small "taps" to the trigger without the need let go.


How to balance damage dealt by opponents in a strategy game? Consider the following situation you are developing a RTS, with different races opposing each other, with different kinds of abilities (e.g. Starcraft). How should I go about in balancing the damage, speed, cool down times etc. of the respective troops units? Are there any good resources on that or sort of test beds?


For games that time stamp a saved game (think Half Life), is the entire game state really being saved every time? It seems to me if that were the case that your directory of saved binaries or serialized objects could get massive real quick. Is there some sort of strategy being employed on top of the State pattern that is optimizing each time stamped saved game so that it isn't saving the entire game "context" all the time?


How to prevent players from getting lost during the onboarding phase of an RPG? I've created a new RPG and tested it with some players. They like it, but get lost at certain points. For example, I'm using hotkeys to open modals, T to talk, and other buttons that do various things. Moreover, some of the quests aren't entirely clear. To fix this, I'm trying to think of a good onboarding approach. I'm implementing three methods for onboarding 1) Cutscenes The cutscenes, especially the opening scene, will give the backstory and explain where they are 2) The NPC dialog Through conversations with NPCs, they will give hints as to what you should do. Right now, I include, somewhat awkwardly, things like "Hi there, I'm Bob. You can press T to talk". 3) Onscreen Tooltips These blink on screen until the player completes the current onboarding task. For example, the tooltip disappears when the player clicks their minimap I'm looking for a more cohesive strategy for onboarding users to the game, or good tutorials for this. Two things I'm weary of are I don't want to be overbearing with help, and am attempting a good Discovery Phase to let the player explore. I don't want the player to leave the game out of frustration with being lost I've seen a lot of techniques for various game genres, and even things like Google apps, where they have a glowing choice for the user to click on. I'm a sole developer, and some of these techniques seem quite complicated to implement. Thanks!


Why don't game developers change game stories after launch? Game developers have shown willing to remove and add game features, change art assets and remake parts of their games in following updates, but why don't they ever change the plot? Some times parts are added to the story, but only as attachments, never revisions. Why is plot thought as a feature beyond editing, even if it would enhance player experience just as much as any graphical update or gameplay tweak? P.S. I would like to ask for a game narrative writing story tag, and they are just as important part of game development as game mechanics. P.S. This is as broad a question as why not to release source code. Therefore I think it is not too broad for answering.


When do you have inflation and when deflation in a virtual economy In a virtual economy, you can calculate all the income and all the costs (money that sinks) from every user in the game. You can calculate the percentage of the new money on the system or the money that has been lost from the system by the income and the costs. I believe that having a small positive percentage is not inflation, but from the other side, crucial for the economy. However, I was wondering if there are any rough limits of this percentage that could lead to an inflation or deflation for negative percentage. For example, if you have every week a result of 1 2 , will not be a serious problem. But if you have 30 or 30 , obviously you will. Have you found from your experience or from any research limits that could ring a bell?


Why has it become commonplace for NPCs to have one weapon per class instead of variants? For instance, in Half Life 2 you have Civil Protection, Combine Soldier and Combine Elite. Each class has a weapon. Is there a shift away from this at all, where the NPCs are matched with the player in the sense that the weapon they choose to use is based upon their advantage, while still maintaining some sense of competitiveness? Is there a reason this became the norm? Does it have to do with all the variables and complications that can arise from doing that?


What can make a peaceful game successful? Today, the most successful games are action games like FPS, RPG, MMORPG... I'd like to make a peaceful game, but I don't know how to attract people. I can make good graphics, but that's not the main thing that makes people like a game for more than a couple of minutes. The content is important. In the game styles mentioned earlier, their main content is fighting, killing others, and generally making yourself the most powerful player in the game. But what content can attract people in a peaceful game?


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


How can I scale the number and challenge of enemies in an attack wave as the game progresses? I'm currently making a defense game where enemies will spawn and attack the player's army. It's similar to a Tower Defense game, except there is only one level. The enemies will keep spawning until eventually the user dies or he amasses a large enough army that they wipe out any enemy that spawns instantly (hopefully it'll be challenging enough that this won't happen). What I'm struggling with at the moment is how to make this game get progressively harder and the probability of an enemy spawning basically eventually reach 100 . So far I've got something similar to the following if(Math.random() lt 1 (1 elapsed time) amp amp spawnTimer lt 0 ) spawnEnemy() spawnTimer rand() random number between 1 and 3 But it seems too uniform to begin with. At the moment I'm only spawning one type of enemy, the idea being that tougher enemies are spawned as time progresses as well. I also think I need to randomise my spawnTimer at bit more and make that get quicker as time progresses, but I just can't seen to get my head around what my logic should really look like for this whole section. Is anyone able to help with a rough idea of this kind of formula? I'm currently using javascript to write the game, but obviously it's more about the concept.


Game mechanics for a persistent real time strategic tactical game I am designing a game based around a fairly realistic simulation of 'Age of sail' like trading and combat, and I am currently trying to decide whether to make the game a limited on line application, in which the game world exists only while all the players 2 to 8 of them are all online, or a persistent real time mmo application, in which game events occur on a set schedule. As a game for a small number of players, uninteresting events could be time accelerated away. The trouble with a real time MMO is that the world objects would be persistent, yet the players would be transient. Since in game encounters and combat would take place on a schedule determined by the actions of all the players, not just those that happen to be online, players could easily miss an encounter or battle in which their vessel happened to be involved or at least could be involved. An idea I had for the MMO version was that otherwise idle time could be spent in training which would be simulated, not merely administrative, and that active crew positions such as gunners, helmsmen, marines and officers could be filled by players, so one ship might have many players online in engagements, each contributing to the success or otherwise of the battle. These positions would be filled by players whose vessels were all engaged in uninteresting travel or laid up for repairs, using a matchmaking system to match the players' observed skill to that of the NPC into whose shoes they would be stepping. NPC skill progression would be based upon the actual skill improvement of the players who step into the role. What other game mechanics could allow a game such as this to be playable as a persistent real time mmo, especially when vessels could spend a long time in transit, doing nothing much of interest?