Opinion: Indie Game Design Do-s and Don't-s: A Manifesto
[Veteran indie game creator Edmund McMillen, known for his work on 2005 IGF Grand Prize winner Gish, Time Fcuk, and Super Meat Boy for WiiWare, shares his opinions and manifesto on making indie games, with 24 clear do-s and don't-s to make your art thrive.] One of the most common questions I'm asked in interviews is, "Do you have any advice for independent game developers who are new to the scene, or tips for developers in general?" Well, I actually answered it this time: I came up with this list of indie do-s and don't-s. Now, I'm going to make clear that I'm not perfect and I'm sure as the years go by this list will change. But from where I stand right now, having made independent art/games for a living for the past 10 years, the advice below is crucial to all indie game designers, and all artists for that matter. Also note that when I refer to a "designer" or "artist," I include programmers. The creative is visible in the work as a whole rather than in the specifics. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
2D Game Art for Programmers
Code Hero raises over $100,000 for shooter that teaches computer programming
Over the years, there have been a lot of efforts to create games that make learning how to program a computer simple and fun, with widely variable results. But indie developer Primer Labs seems to have hit on something special with Code Hero, a first-person shooter that teaches JavaScript and UnityScript programming by letting players fire bits of code that actually affect the environment. The group recently reached its Kickstarter funding goal of $100,000 for the project, and is still looking for last-minute donations to help fund a multiplayer mode. Despite the name, Code Hero is much more like Portal or Minecraft than Guitar Hero, according to its creators, but "instead of making blocks or portals, you shoot Javascript" that executes when it hits its target. The team has been "eating ramen or worse" to make a beta version of the game, which got an amazing response at last year's Minecraft-focused Minecon convention in Las Vegas, Peake said.
A Video Game Development Blog
November 17th, 2008 Posted in Reviews, Featured | No Comments » A Digital Dreamer takes a close look at this gem of a PS3 game that every designer should take the time to play. We had heard a lot of great things about LittleBigPlanet for the Playstation 3 months before it was released. We heard things like the way the characters were designed and showed emotions brought instant smiles on the faces of pretty much anyone who had a chance to play it. We had heard about great looking levels, multiplayer interaction, and creation aspects of the game. Little did we know… Little did we know… Getting down to the most basic elements of the game, LittleBigPlanet is essentially a 2D side scrolling adventure. Read the rest of this entry »
Amit’s Game Programming Information
What’s on this page? I’m interested in producing complexity out of simple parts. This page contains bookmarks that I collected while working on games; I did not write most of the content linked from here. As a result the set of links here reflects the types of things I needed to know: only a few specific topics (not everything related to game programming), general ideas instead of platform-specific information (graphics, sound, compilers), and ideas and designs instead of source code (I find it easier to go from an idea to code than from code to an idea). Other sites, like Gamedev Tuts+, Gamedev, and Gamasutra, cover lots more topics than mine does. Determining how to move around on a map is an interesting problem. These pages are about specific techniques for pathfinding and object movement: My current favorite algorithm is A*, because it can handle varying terrain costs well, and it seems to be faster than most graph searching algorithms. Code and Demos Data structures Displaying Tiles
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30 game scripts you can write in PHP, Part 1: Creating 10 fundamental scripts
Getting started As both a game master/storyteller and a developer, I frequently find myself writing little utilities and scripts to help me when running, planning, and playing games. Sometimes I need a quick idea. Other times, I just need a whole pile of names for Non-Player Characters (NPCs). Occasionally, I need to geek out on numbers, work out some odds, or integrate some word puzzles into a game. This article will explore 10 fundamental scripts that can be used in various types of games. We will blaze through these scripts pretty quickly. Back to top A basic die roller Many games and game systems need dice. In many cases, that would be more or less fine. Listing 1. function roll () { return mt_rand(1,6); } echo roll(); Then we can pass the type of die we want to roll as a parameter to the function. Listing 2. function roll ($sides) { return mt_rand(1,$sides); } echo roll(6); // roll a six-sided die echo roll(10); // roll a ten-sided die echo roll(20); // roll a twenty-sided die Summary
TIGSource
Introduction to A*
In games we often want to find paths from one location to another. We’re not just trying to find the shortest distance; we also want to take into account travel time. Move the blob (start point) and cross (end point) to see the shortest path. To find this path we can use a graph search algorithm, which works when the map is represented as a graph. The first thing to do when studying an algorithm is to understand the data. Input: Graph search algorithms, including A*, take a “graph” as input. Sprites by StarRavensee footer for link A* doesn’t see anything else. Output: The path found by A* is . Tradeoffs: For any given game map, there are many different ways of making a pathfinding graph to give to A*. The pathfinding graph doesn’t have to be the same as what your game map uses. There are lots of algorithms that run on graphs. I’ll start with the simplest, Breadth First Search, and add one feature at a time to turn it into A*. How do we implement this? Let’s see this up close. Distance
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