Tumgik
#game design
prokopetz · 2 days
Text
Frankly, the biggest reason nobody can figure out how to make a Duke Nukem reboot work is because they think the 90s edgelord bullshit is the main reason that Duke Nukem 3D was such a breakout hit, when the truth of the matter is that it succeeded at least partly in spite of that. Duke Nukem 3D legitimately pushed the envelope in terms of what it was possible for a first-person shooter to be – in many ways it's just as foundational to the genre in its modern form as Wolfenstein 3D or Doom. You can't recapture that with dick jokes, and if you're not willing to take risks in terms of basic game design, dick jokes are all you have.
Ultimately, what the franchise really needs to shake off its creative rust is to stop trying to iterate on its established formula and shift genres entirely. To this end, I have a proposal: make the next Duke Nukem game a side-scrolling metroidvania. In this essay
4K notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Mipa! a main character from an upcoming VR game i'm making with a friend!
120 notes · View notes
kawaoneechan · 2 days
Text
Okay so in a game like Animal Crossing, there's a bunch of things all happening at once. You can have a screen full of villagers walking around doing their thing, balloons flying, bugs bugging, a system in the background to handle hourly background music with chimes in between, all that good stuff, while you're doing your own things.
When you talk to a villager, you and the villager both stop on the spot, and a script takes over. That script then makes the villager turn to the player and a dialogue window appears. There may be a multiple choice thing now — "talk", "gift", or "leave" — and the script won't stop, releasing control to both, until what you've selected plays out.
So you have a villager with an attached script. The villager waits for the script to finish before continuing on their merry way, while the script waits for the villager to finish turning to the player. Once that's done, it picks something to say and eventually ends up opening the dialogue window. The script now has to wait for the message to finish writing, and the very next command is an "if" involving the result of a multiple choice question, so now the script has to wait for that to return.
I was thinking for Project Special K I might implement all that as several Tickable objects. Not unlike in SCI, you'd have a big list of things in the game that all implement a Tick method. In SCI, that'd be the cast, and its members have doit methods. It's the same deal, but Tick also gets a delta-time argument. So the dialogue box gets to be its own thing that implements Tickable, the multiple choice box is as well. Inventory window? Yes.
Also the script interpreter.
But all that wouldn't let the villager wait for the script interpreter, which waits for the dialogue box, right? Script execution should be halted until the dialogue box is dismissed. That one villager's AI should be halted until the interpreter finishes, only moving (or rather, emoting) because of embedded commands in the dialogue box's text stream.
So I figured, what if I gave them something like a mutex variable? The villager would have a bool waiting or whatever, and passes a pointer to that bool to the script interpreter they spawn when the player interacts with them. The interpreter is added to the cast list and starts running the code it was given. When it's done, it not only removes itself from the cast but sets the bool pointer so the villager can tell it's over and done with.
Now every time through the loop, the villager's Tick is called and they can tell "oh, I'm waiting for a script to finish" because their bool isn't set yet. The script interpreter likewise can spawn a dialogue box into the cast and have its own "waiting for that darn dialogue box" bool, in exactly the same way the villager can wait for the script interpreter.
Next trick, the dialogue box should remain on screen even when things are done, so multiple choice answers can have the question remain visible. It should only close when a different style of box is called for, or when the script ends. My idea is to always have a dialogue box object in the cast, idling until called for. When the villager realizes the script has ended, they can simply poke the dialogue box and have it close, if nothing else already did.
90 notes · View notes
starstabberzirc · 15 hours
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Made a nice little obvious Glowing Weak Point for mechanical bosses, just to vary it up from the anatomical hearts
57 notes · View notes
morganalakay · 1 day
Text
If you want to play an early alpha build of my upcoming movement game Onder Valley, $5 Patrons can do so now on my Patreon!
-39 levels
-blistering speeds
-definitely some bugs here and there
The money goes directly to my groceries and bills so it would be much appreciated!
patreon.com/OnderPeak
52 notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media
transition goal <3
22 notes · View notes
underspacegame · 2 days
Text
The good news is that multiplayer is working once more.
The bad news is that multiplayer is not working once more.
21 notes · View notes
omeletcat · 3 days
Text
I made it so that the player appears behind the bush whenever you walk above it at a certain point! because of that the enemies now do target the player's feet to attack, but ehhh i'm not gonna shame them for it.
19 notes · View notes
andreablythe · 21 hours
Text
Among the multitude of amazing talks at GDC 2024 , one of my faves is a talk by Jordan Magnuson about how poetry can help designers make better games. It was incredibly insightful, so I wrote up some of the lessons I took away from his talk.
17 notes · View notes
greenflamethegf · 9 months
Text
Tumblr media
TBH that might even thiner they avrage
32K notes · View notes
amberautumnfaebrooke · 9 months
Text
i think i could design a better death arena for children than those hunger games amateurs.
the whole premise of the games is all pageantry. every year you get a crop of 24 candidates around whom the entire state media apparatus dedicates an entire year to building celebrity narratives. this candidate is the younger sibling of last year's winner - these candidates are young lovers forced to compete - he's smart - she's fast - root for them, care about them, watch them, form opinions on them, bet on them. and then they stick them all in an arena to kill each other, which is a great entertainment premise, except that they make the arenas themselves really boring and generic. ooo, they're in...a forest.
it's not even an interestingly designed forest. imagine if the game designers treated their arena like an actual video game designer treats level design. discrete zones with multiple paths between each room, creative use of lighting to guide players to points of interest, points of interest scattered across the map, discoverable resources hidden to encourage exploration. instead they just have a generic outdoors location and if you get too close to the edge they throw a random fireball at you.
the 75th games are especially bad about this. the arena is laid out radially into 12 wedges, and each hour one wedge becomes especially dangerous in a 12-hour loop. as a mechanic, this is genius. it forces everyone to keep moving, making "survival by hiding" an engaging and tense viewing experience instead of someone sitting in a tree for three days. plus, it encourages players to return to the center of the arena, where travel time between wedges is short, which creates a high-value zone for players to regularly return to and conflict over. in other words, it's a mechanic which incentives players to adopt dramatic, dynamic, exciting behaviors which are entertaining to watch (not to mention it communicates geography to the audience well). but it only incentives those behaviors if the players understand what's happening, and they go out of their way not to tell the players anything! when they figure out what's going on, the showrunners spin the arena to disorient the players, like they're intentionally trying to get them to just. randomly wander the jungle instead.
this isn't even to mention how often they create undramatic, boring deaths. they plant poison berries around the arena. they supply no fresh water and no way to get it. they roll poison clouds over sleeping victims. these happen to work out in the books themselves but you have to imagine that extremely often these just result in players dying unexciting deaths.
the cardinal sin though, of course, is that nothing is done to personalize the arena for the crop of contestants that year. if i'm designing the 75th hunger games and two of my most beloved contestants famously had to cancel their wedding because of a return to the games, i would OBVIOUSLY give them a trail of, i don't know, wild game which conveniently leads directly past a well defended wedding chapel. will they hole up there for a while? hold a mock ceremony for themselves? do or receive ironic violence here? stare wistfully and move on? any of it is better television than getting attacked by generic attack monkeys. you should have a dozen of these things on the map for every single candidate. but the game makers are more interested in doing the same thing every other game has done than in telling a compelling story.
it makes me second guess enjoying the children's murder arenas at all.
9K notes · View notes
prokopetz · 2 days
Text
If this poll gets a hundred thousand votes before the voting period is up I'll write a short-form tabletop RPG where you play as members of a former-girls-in-boxes support group.
2K notes · View notes
insertdisc5 · 3 months
Text
📚 A List Of Useful Websites When Making An RPG 📚
My timeloop RPG In Stars and Time is done! Which means I can clear all my ISAT gamedev related bookmarks. But I figured I would show them here, in case they can be useful to someone. These range from "useful to write a story/characters/world" to "these are SUPER rpgmaker focused and will help with the terrible math that comes with making a game".
This is what I used to make my RPG game, but it could be useful for writers, game devs of all genres, DMs, artists, what have you. YIPPEE
Writing (Names)
Behind The Name - Why don't you have this bookmarked already. Search for names and their meanings from all over the world!
Medieval Names Archive - Medieval names. Useful. For ME
City and Town Name Generator - Create "fake" names for cities, generated from datasets from any country you desire! I used those for the couple city names in ISAT. I say "fake" in quotes because some of them do end up being actual city names, especially for french generated ones. Don't forget to double check you're not 1. just taking a real city name or 2. using a word that's like, Very Bad, especially if you don't know the country you're taking inspiration from! Don't want to end up with Poopaville, USA
Writing (Words)
Onym - A website full of websites that are full of words. And by that I mean dictionaries, thesauruses, translators, glossaries, ways to mix up words, and way more. HIGHLY recommend checking this website out!!!
Moby Thesaurus - My thesaurus of choice!
Rhyme Zone - Find words that rhyme with others. Perfect for poets, lyricists, punmasters.
In Different Languages - Search for a word, have it translated in MANY different languages in one page.
ASSETS
In general, I will say: just look up what you want on itch.io. There are SO MANY assets for you to buy on itch.io. You want a font? You want a background? You want a sound effect? You want a plugin? A pixel base? An attack animation? A cool UI?!?!?! JUST GO ON ITCH.IO!!!!!!
Visual Assets (General)
Creative Market - Shop for all kinds of assets, from fonts to mockups to templates to brushes to WHATEVER YOU WANT
Velvetyne - Cool and weird fonts
Chevy Ray's Pixel Fonts - They're good fonts.
Contrast Checker - Stop making your text white when your background is lime green no one can read that shit babe!!!!!!
Visual Assets (Game Focused)
Interface In Game - Screenshots of UI (User Interfaces) from SO MANY GAMES. Shows you everything and you can just look at what every single menu in a game looks like. You can also sort them by game genre! GREAT reference!
Game UI Database - Same as above!
Sound Assets
Zapsplat, Freesound - There are many sound effect websites out there but those are the ones I saved. Royalty free!
Shapeforms - Paid packs for music and sounds and stuff.
Other
CloudConvert - Convert files into other files. MAKE THAT .AVI A .MOV
EZGifs - Make those gifs bigger. Smaller. Optimize them. Take a video and make it a gif. The Sky Is The Limit
Marketing
Press Kitty - Did not end up needing this- this will help with creating a press kit! Useful for ANY indie dev. Yes, even if you're making a tiny game, you should have a press kit. You never know!!!
presskit() - Same as above, but a different one.
Itch.io Page Image Guide and Templates - Make your project pages on itch.io look nice.
MOOMANiBE's IGF post - If you're making indie games, you might wanna try and submit your game to the Independent Game Festival at some point. Here are some tips on how, and why you should.
Game Design (General)
An insightful thread where game developers discuss hidden mechanics designed to make games feel more interesting - Title says it all. Check those comments too.
Game Design (RPGs)
Yanfly "Let's Make a Game" Comics - INCREDIBLY useful tips on how to make RPGs, going from dungeons to towns to enemy stats!!!!
Attack Patterns - A nice post on enemy attack patterns, and what attacks you should give your enemies to make them challenging (but not TOO challenging!) A very good starting point.
How To Balance An RPG - Twitter thread on how to balance player stats VS enemy stats.
Nobody Cares About It But It’s The Only Thing That Matters: Pacing And Level Design In JRPGs - a Good Post.
Game Design (Visual Novels)
Feniks Renpy Tutorials - They're good tutorials.
I played over 100 visual novels in one month and here’s my advice to devs. - General VN advice. Also highly recommend this whole blog for help on marketing your games.
I hope that was useful! If it was. Maybe. You'd like to buy me a coffee. Or maybe you could check out my comics and games. Or just my new critically acclaimed game In Stars and Time. If you want. Ok bye
4K notes · View notes
Text
Videogames I wish were real #97
A roguelike game that takes place in the world's biggest library, which has been overrun by monsters, where you play as a librarian determined to save it. You venture inside the library armed with your weapon of choice and two messenger bags you plan to fill with whatever books you can rescue.
After you clear the monsters in a particular section of the library, such as the Poetry section, you'll unlock a permanent buff that will last for the remaining of that run. For example: clearing the Travel section will help you map areas faster, and also unlock the bookworm railway system that will allow you to move more easily between certain parts of the library.
Besides section buffs, you'll also be able to learn all kinds of useful attacks and skills by finding specific books in the shelves, reading them and carrying them in your messenger bags. The more books you carry, the stronger your character will be, and the abilities each book will grant you will be on theme with the book, it's literary genre or one of its tropes: carrying with you a bestiary will allow you to quickly identify the weak points of monsters you've met before, a book with an enemies to lovers trope will allow you to turn a monster into a temporary ally that will fight alongside you, a botany book in your bag will let you gather medicinal herbs growing in the library, and carrying a potions book will allow you to prepare healing potions (more effective than just herbs), etc.
Not everyone believes the library can be saved, which is why during your expeditions your mission is not only to kill monsters, but also to rescue books and bring them to the new library. Since getting books out is one of your main priorities, starting your runs with your satchels nearly full of books that grant you useful abilities won't be very efficient, so you'll need to decide how many books you want to bring back with you to the library during each run.
Fighting monsters is dangerous, and sometimes you get hurt, but also, sometimes books get hurt, which why after some runs you might need to stop by your workshop to repair any damaged books. The hides of certain monsters are very sturdy, so using them to rebind books will make them more durable.
There is no respawning in this game. If your librarian dies inside the library, the next librarian that ventures inside might eventually find their body. If you're close to death and you have a particular book from the Travel section in your bags, you'll be able to use it to summon a bookwork that will take you quickly and safely back to the entrance with whatever books are currently in your bag.
You love your library, and you are determined to save it, armed with the greatest weapon in the world: knowledge (and a sword), even if it's one book at a time.
2K notes · View notes
ganondoodle · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media
rough concept for the unique boss within the deku-tree (required for the quest to repair the mastersword; boss name is a placeholder)
(totk rewritten project)
4K notes · View notes
devsgames · 2 months
Text
Skyrim's late-game power-fantasy-creep is so funny even by fantasy standards. Like, it's hilarious how it feels like it completely steamrolls everything else. By the end of the game you're:
the Chosen One
dragonslayer
Archmage of the only magic college in the kingdom
leader of a group of werewolf paladins (or alternatively a literal Vampire Lord)
vampire slayer
minor nobility of literally every county in the kingdom (and one not in the kingdom)
high ranking soldier of a faction of the civil war
personal conduit and champion for like a dozen various deities and gods
leader of an ancient and forgotten dragon-slaying warband
master of the thieves guild
leader of a group of serial killers
protector of the entire kingdom
member of a bard's college
Like imagine a person existing that had all these titles and also the actual lived experience to back it up.
2K notes · View notes