#game programming

[askagamedev]

How true is the saying “there is more permanent then a temporary solution” in the context of game developement?

Once, one of my coworkers printed out "temporary" hacks in our codebase and taped them to his body to be his Halloween costume. I have a t-shirt printed with the "temporary" hacks in the code base. The name "Grey Wardens" from Dragon Age was a temporary name put in place when leadership couldn't decide on a "real" name that eventually became permanent. I can't count the number of "placeholder" text I've written that eventually became permanent. I learned that the only way to make placeholder text actually temporary (and eventually get replaced) is to purposely write text that would either fail cert or look bad on the company and get flagged by QA.

Basically, games have a lot of hacky shit put in "temporarily" that can (and often does) eventually become load-bearing.

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[pastryslutsupreme]

My favorite part of the psychonauts speedrun videos is watching specifically Kee Chi (programmer and lead programmer on psy1 and psy2 respectively) put his head in his hands and wail in despair. The highlight of the videos on rewatch is watching Kee witness something that absolutely should not be possible and just go “OHHH NOOOOOO”- notable examples are Kee discovering prop flying in the second (and first game, although in the first it’s just lev flying) and discovering that you can just fly into the sky in Velvetopia and skip straight to the bullfight. Kee Chi Despair Moments of all time btw

+ links in notes

[gleafer]

GUYS.

My niece made a game. It’s SO FREAKING CUTE AND FUN! Romance game where you go to a bookshop, pick a genre and the hero pops out of the book to take you on a “choose your own adventure” trip!

The art is spectacular and the concept fresh! And AND AND it’s no set cost, you pay what you can and it’s YOURS!

It’s already got over 3000+ players! (Including me!)

[lith-the-dev]

so Farming games

Serious question: What makes farming sims like Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon good to play story-wise and gameplay-wise?

as someone who's looking into making farming sim I'm quite curious to know because there's so much I as myself can play from my own experience and read blogs about it

[magic-yard-of-pidrav]

[Fading Runes] The second pre-prototype of my game is finished.

Fading Runes is a strategic and creativity-based tower defense game, influenced by roguelites!

💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥

The game will make you struggle into solving a huge crysis in a world shaped by the magic of the runes. Please consider to follow if you like roguelite, towerdefense, and creativity centered games; there are a lot of runes to be drawn!

(dev. notes: this preprototype was aimed to create and test a machine learning model to correctly guess the rune drawn by the players, it can still be improved since it has an accuracy of 97.3%, but probably I could expand the training set as the game gains some funding!) = (translated to not Dev: this preprototype is smarter then an half-blind 🪨 at guessing runes, but still is not good as a 3 years old 👶)

[fd-misc]

Working on procedural generation. I'm not super far along, and the perfectionist in me wants to wait until I have something worth actually showing before I post, but I figured it would be better to show what I have now, otherwise I might just never. It uses the Linear Interpolation of the Marching cubes algorithm, the original code was created by Omar Santiago (on youtube, check out his videos!) and fills the grid using Perlin Noise. It generates a 2D "mask" using several layers of Perlin Noise, the first layer (shown as the red mesh) is the "continentiality" layer. It changes in height very slowly, but can go from 0-100 (the player is about 2-3). The next layer is the stone layer (the gray mesh) it has multiple octaves, and considering the world is actually diggable and works in 3d (so caves are possible) the stone layer determines where the dirt ends and the stone starts. Finally, the dirt layer (the green mesh), which has a very rough surface, but small changes to height, as well as coating the world in a layer of dirt, this layer gives the world a rough finish. Additionally, in the future I hope to use the dirt layer to determine what plants can grow where (as tall trees with deep roots can't grow in thin soil). There are also a lot of features that work, but I couldn't display here. I wanted to add biomes, but to do that I needed to switch from a single collection of octaves to multiple layers, so now the terrain generates way over the players head, meaning I had to disable the player for the sake of this demonstration. But the world is actually infinite and generates chunks around the player as they move. Additionally, there is a second water mesh that spawns, but it only spawns below a certain level, so it was not shown. Also, the mesh accepts multiple materials (sand, dirt, stone, etc...) originally, the materials were simply determined by height, but I wanted the materials to be determined by the biome, so that's temporarily down. Plants can also generate in a very crude way, basically just randomly placed, and I also have a very crude building system. I hope to get things working again soon so I can really show off the extent of this program, but for now... eh... here it is. One final note, when I finish this project (or at least get to a point I'm comfortable releasing it as a functional tool) I plan on releasing the source code for free. I know there's a lot of indie developers with some big ideas, and I think having easy access to some basic procedural generation could help them overcome a big hurdle and focus on some real gameplay. I'm excited to see how people modify my code to make even cooler procedural generation, or just make use of it to springboard their own game into the market. Happy coding!

[mossware]

SotG #003

Howdy folks! Welcome back to another state of the game post. This week I bring good news, the players movement is done for foreseeable future! Or at least for what I need it to do right now. I've attached a gif showing it off too so y'all finally have some visual aid for what I'm talking about. The player is able to move without impediment on any slope within a steepness limit, and they'll properly rotate to match whatever incline their on. Feels pretty smooth and looks so too. With that out of the way I can properly focus my efforts onto more pressing matters, like combat! I'll try to create more visually appealing posts from now on too so y'all don't have to deal with just a wall of text lmao.

[magnificentpollytaco]

im working on a visual novel/dating sim because my adhd ass tells me to (i dont have the skills and im afraid ill drop the project soon)

im mega focused right now and im learning how to code hehe xP

[this-user-loves-tech]

I think I made the jump force a bit too high- XDDD

[askagamedev]

How much use does Rust (the programming language) see in game development?

I haven't ever seen it used. Game dev still primarily runs on C++ to do the heavy lifting. We often build internal tools with C#, Python, or Perl. Some games will run interpreted scripting languages like Lua for designers to script out encounters and such. RPG Maker utilizes Ruby or Javascript for its scripting language, depending on the version. To my knowledge, nobody uses Rust, Swift, or Go in game development.

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[platypusundercover]

pros and cons of working in the game industry when you love coding and making games :

pros:

-I get paid to make video games!! Yay!!

Cons

-I sit at my desk staring at lines of code 8 hours a day. I have no more energy to create anything that involves codes on my personal time. I refuse to get a glimpse of a game engine if it's not between 8am to 4pm, Monday through Friday.

[lith-the-dev]

Zephy boy has access to magic

[magic-yard-of-pidrav]

[Fading Runes] Yawnlia's Dev Explanation 2#: How great is this game?

[pigknightwarrior]

Calling All Unity Programmers!

Are you a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog and have some skills in Unity? We’re working on a Sonic Boom fan game, and we need your help to make it awesome!

We’re a small, dedicated team of Sonic fans who are passionate about bringing a fresh experience to the community. If you’ve got experience with Unity and a love for fast-paced gameplay, we’d love to have you on board.

P.S If you have other skills in things such as level design, environmental concept art, 3D modeling, etc. Feel free to join as well.

What We’re Looking For:

- Unity and C# skills

- Experience with platformer mechanics (2D or 3D)

- A genuine love for Sonic games

- A collaborative attitude and willingness to learn

Why Join?

- Work on a fun, fan-driven project

- Build your portfolio and gain experience

- Collaborate with fellow Sonic enthusiasts

- Contribute to a game that’s all about the speed and excitement we love

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, join our discord! We’re excited to work together and create something special for the Sonic community.

Join Team Neutralix!

https://discord.gg/mVqG8f6JNV

[koifishcoyote]

Metasuper 5/27/25

Finally! I (mostly) figured out the enemy AI. That is to say, I did what any good programmer does and looked it up. Except I didn't copy any code. That isn't a luxury I have since I ran out of tutorial. Instead I took the theory of a heuristic and made my own version. It doesn't do much yet except pick somewhere to move, but that's the hardest part *knock on wood*

I also have a selector panel so you can pick your heroes from a list every level.