#how to make a game

[shawnthebro]

Continuing with our project’s upgrades, we are addressing the character class! Let’s clean it up!

[tangleworm]

NOMIA Devlog 3 -- Diagonals

(Been working on the mix of enemy generation, but I haven't done the art for many of them yet!)

There's lots of weird stuff that happens when your game is tile-based, like how to handle movement and knockback.

There's lots of ways to handle "distance" in a tile-based world. You could make it so that 1 unit of movement lets you step left, right, up, or down -- this is called rectilinear distance, or Manhattan distance. Fire Emblem does this. You could make it so that a unit of movement also lets you step diagonally -- this is called chessboard distance, or Chebyshev distance. Many D&D battlemaps do this.

I decided to go with rectilinear distance for this game, since it's more intuitive when we consider distances in the real world. This means that going diagonally costs 2 points of movement -- an attack with a range of 2 will only be able to target the immediately adjacent diagonal tiles.

However, certain attacks can move the caster (lunging and retreating), the target (knockback and pull-in), or both. There are a number of ways we can make a "line" from one point to the next in rectilinear geometry. How do we handle non-orthogonal pushing and pulling?

I could think of three ways to handle it.

1. Don't

If we restrict any self/target-moving abilities to just the orthogonal tiles, we can sidestep the whole issue. This is simple to implement, and the player will always understand exactly how knockback will work, because it only happens when we can count exactly how many tiles everything will move.

The downside to this is that this cross-shaped target can get extremely annoying when you want to hit an enemy that's directly diagonal to you. Because movement costs an action point in this game, it can get annoying to have to spend that point to do a very minor positional adjustment to hit an enemy that already "feels" adjacent to you.

2. Kinda Do

If the target is at exactly 45 degrees, it only gets a little more complicated to understand, but it gets a lot less annoying at close ranges. Every diagonal tile needs 2 units of knockback.

The tricky part is handling the different corners an enemy can get knocked into. Because knockback does damage based on how much remaining knockback there is when the unit hits a wall, how do we handle when it hits a corner, but there's only 1 unit of knockback left? How do we handle them hitting a convex corner (e.g. being shoved into the corner of a building from the exterior) versus a concave corner (e.g. being shoved into the corner pocket of a pool table)? Can we make this intuitive for the player to understand?

3. Really Do

We can go all the way and let knockback abilities hit every tile a non-knockback ability can.

This is difficult for both the developer and the player, since there are many ways to form a line (i.e. the shortest distance between two points) when we're in rectilinear space. Should we snap the knockback to the closest direction? Should we push the enemy on a path that might not be what the player wanted? Should we let the player choose, and slow down the decision for every knockback card by an extra click? Even this diagram is complex to look at, and we haven't even gotten into handling convex corners versus corner pockets.

It didn't seem worth it for the tradeoffs.

In the end: I originally went for Don't, but after some consideration I'm partway through implementing Kinda Do, and I'm happy with this choice. It prevents knockback-related abilities from feeling underpowered due to needing to spend an action point on a minor positional adjustment before casting them, and most knockback abilities are close range anyway.

If anything, this shows how much thought must have went into the various tile-based worlds we've seen before.

[imperatoralicia]

I get a lot of entertainment thinking about how containers are used in video games sometimes.

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[itsajollyjester]

His first real birthday

[clearlydusty]

Made some happy mouthwashing fanart, all credit for the images go to @joetastic2739, thank you joetastic for feeding me and everyone else in the MW community <3

Also click for much better quality cuz this looks TRASH now that I’m seeing it again

(close ups and links to joetastics posts below !! )

Anya Steam awards , Anya admiring herself

Daisuke's Daisuke Dance , Daisuke as Yosuke

[redstonedust]

i appreciate the attempts a lot of game devs are making with gender neutral character creation, and i appreciate that it's actually a very difficult task to implement that depending on the game's base code. but it's so funny to me when you hear an uproar because some game has "entirely removed the gender option from character creation!!!!!" so you go to check it out and its just like

[pistashxo]

they should invent a corporate negligence that doesn't whisper things to you

prints

[jdfitzroy]

Game Design Log 1: Finding Ermwood

In the last two months there’s been a great deal of creative fun as I ramp up the graphic design aspect of my work. With recent inspiration and a cool new concept, I’ve started work on a new card game. The process has been both challenging and very rewarding. Having played several card games, I began to form concepts for my own mechanic. I’d wanted to reshape and re-theme Bruce Glassco’s game…

[shawnthebro]

Time out! Sometimes we need to pause the game and take a break. Let’s create the Pause Menu!

[clumsypuppy]

abogagos……..

[chloesimaginationthings]

The day FNAF Charlie Emily was shut out..

[anbaisai]

new jafar fit in that new disney game too good to not draw on jamil

[captainjonnitkessler]

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.

[trashy-greyjoy]

sometimes, it's not so much about the romance as it is about the devotion. the adoration.