Dev Thread

>>381666209
Woah, that's actually pretty clever.

>>381666485
No it's not

>>381666594
As long the player cant realize it is

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I'm making a Dark Souls style ring for fun. I call it a Hollowed Carapace ring, the idea being the more hollow the wearer the more it increases physical defence.

This is the high poly sculpt, I'll be doing a low poly textured version

I never understood this pic. Someone explain?

>>381667186
the tram in the game was actually an NPC running with the tram on her head as a hat

>>381667061

Good job fitting the style of DS.

>>381666594
Yes it is, it's a unconventional solution to a problem that is hidden from the user.

>>381667186
There's a section in Fallout 3 where the player enters a subway train and travels to a story-related area. The engine of the game couldn't handle changing the camera perspective and locking it in place inside the train, so the dev team found another way by putting the train car on the player's head as a hat, while the player is running across the tracks. On one hand, it shows the limitations of the engine, on the other, it shows how creative the devs were with this solution.

I'm trying to learn Godot, but I get so easily confused when it comes to game engines. I'd rather just use a regular programming language, but making a game there would take up a lot more time.

>>381666485
what is? layman here.

>>381667061
Looks great, what program did you use?

>>381667061
Looks like something straight out of H. R. Geiger's night terrors.

>>381668672
max/mudbox

>>381668989
He's my #1 influence artistically

>>381666594

Work smarter, not harder, retard.

>>381667584

> limitations of the engine
No.
> Creative solution using existing assets
Yes.
If you think for a second that you'll be paid to hand-code every single unique system that's used only once in the game you'll be fired for wasting everyone's time.

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spook

it's actually going to be a game for kids, i'm just playing with lighting when i should be modeling more stuff.

>>381671423
Looks like Receiver.

>>381671423
Make it a game for kids but give it a really elaborate easter egg puzzle to make it really creepy horror

>>381671423

Hey, if you want to eliminate those light banding artefacts you can apply a debanding or dithering shader. What it does is overlays the screen buffer with a very very low opacity coloured noise (random dots) filter that tricks the eye into breaking uniformity, causing those lights to look like smooth gradients.
If you're decent with shaders you could port the one from Reshade up on github.

>>381666594
As much as I hate Bethesda's developers, this is a clever and quick way to make a train, that will appear for one scene, on their horrible framework.

Tramlady is depressed

Cheer her up

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Up to now I've been using an overlay to add a bit of extra texture and noise to my graphics, but recently I've been liking the look of it with just solid colors. Any thoughts?

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aye, lad... you've boarded the wrong ship.

>>381671532
just looked it up and you're right. thankfully i have a person working on textures atm.
>>381671924
there will be some creepy parts in the game. in particular, you come across a haunted house with an npc and you both get trapped. you have to solve puzzles to escape.
>>381672048
ah, i was wondering about that. this helps tremendously, thank you.

hahah what the heck is going on in that pic?

is it a photoshop meme or sometthing

Basically Sid Meier's Somalian Pirates!

>>381673269
they're white little people, friend.

>>381672782
can you post just the texture? it needs to look more like folded cloth, imo.

>>381673435
Nah, Im talking about what Im working on

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>>381673512
This is it, it's supposed to be similar to construction paper.

>>381673684
oh, gotcha. post some pics of it.

>>381673687
i like it, but it needs to be a bit more crinkly.

>>381673790
Nothing much to show now, just a bunch of GPL-model fishing boats sailing about. Im working on the system that handles all the AI boats; giving them tasks like trading, recycling them when they get destroyed, and so on.

>>381666485
No it isn't they're lazy retards who couldn't even figure out how to make ladders work.
If they were smart or clever they'd figure out how to make moving platforms that don't leave an actor behind, they couldn't so they bruteforced the only option available to them.

Imagine being unable to figure out how to drive a car so you call a tow truck to take you everywhere instead of a taxi or taking the bus, would you call that smart or clever? No, you'd call it fucking retarded.

>>381672782
Texture looks better, without texture looks better to you because you've been starring at the left for god knows how long.

I'm sure you've hard of the artist trick to flip your image after working on it for hours because your brain gets use to shit and causes you to miss things. Same thing basically, it's something new so you notice things more and it tricks you into thinking it looks better.

That's why even if you know what you're doing no matter how experienced you are it's a good idea to ask other people's opinions because they're going to see it as fresh and new.

>>381672782
Textured is better.

>>381674646
You're so utterly wrong. Of course developers can spend months programming and testing a mechanic so they can use it in one location in the game, or they can spend a day fitting it into the systems they already programmed. The fact that nobody noticed it when playing, and it's only apparent from looking at the mod kit, proves that it worked. Next you'll be complaining that explosions are just a big hitbox with sprites on top of it instead of an actual chemical and physical reaction being simulated. It's just an abstraction.

>>381675028
Thanks for the feedback, I'm sure your explanation is correct. At least I had the self-awareness to ask for people's opinions. I'm probably going to make the texture a toggle in the options menu but I'll make it on by default.

>>381675436
Its just weird that this was their first solution instead of just making a camera and the model and moving it along a spline. Like thats pretty standard stuff for vidya. Pretty sure thats how the Vertibirds work minus the camera part.

>>381674646
The difference is that no one actually notices, which is all that matters.

Take how both Fallout 3 and NV handle radio broadcasts. In order for sound to be played, their engine requires the audio to come from an actor/ interact able in the environment, so what they did was spawn a terminal underneath the map that allows from radio broadcasts to be heard.

Criticise Bethesda for using Gamebryo all you want, but they're good at working within the limitations they give themselves.

>>381666485
Yeah just another show of brilliance from the devs that still haven't figured out how to implement ladders. IT JUST WORKS!

>>381675790
Vertabirds are actual NPCs, hence why they can be destroyed. Bethesda also recycled parts of the Vertabird AI for the dragons in Skyrim.

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>>381667061
That looks way too structurally complex to fit into Dark Souls.

>>381675927
>the difference is no one actually notices

Nobody noticed Fallout 3 was a shitty game?

>>381675436
>or they can spend a day fitting it into the systems they already programmed
Why couldn't they fit in ladders then? They did this because they were too stupid to figure out how, the railway system in Fallout 3 was janky shit too and Obsidian had no problem doing it properly.

Simply making the model an actor would've been easier as well, since it wouldn't require the extra steps to stop it from moving along with character movement. You're a fucking retard and you should stop arguing about things you have 0 knowledge of whatsoever.

>>381676890
Ladders don't fit into the systems already established. Implement models requires specific collision detection, modelling and animating climbing animations as well as ensuring that various scripts don't clash with each other. All of this requires a lot of time and resources.

Why do all that when you can give the ladders the same function as a door for the same effect? It's also why Obsidian didn't implement ladders.

>>381677514
>require climbing animations
Nah, they didn't think they needed diagonal walking animations, probably wouldn't have needed those either

>>381676890
I don't work for Bethesda but I am a professional game programmer so unless you work in the same field I can guarantee I know more about this than you do. Reducing the work load by using an existing system is the smartest thing you can do and not stupid at all. By making ladders secretly doors to loading zones, they allow you to use ladders in places where it makes sense without having to overhaul their movement system. Making the tram a character wearing the object is the smartest thing they could have done because the only types of objects they had programmed so far are static environmental objects which don't move, physics objects which are moved dynamically, and NPCS. By making it an NPC they can get it to follow a rigid path, turning the proper directions and controlling its speed, without having to add another object type into the game just for this one special case, and the only way anyone even noticed is by opening the CK.

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Post more dev tricks

>>381677980
You don't even need to noclip to notice this. The ground itself isn't leveled so one end as longer looking legs than the other. It's as if rather than putting the table on a level surface, someone cut the legs down on one end to make it level with the slanted ground. No one in the real world would do this sort of thing.

>>381677980
this is a bad trick because the table looks awful, like it was custom made to sit on that exact configuration of rocks rather than a flat surface.

>>381667551
It's a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place, they just can't actually code an engine worth a damn.

>>381677942
>>381676890
I'm not a professional game programmer, but a huge part of big projects (like making a AAA game) is not doing pointless things. It sounds obvious, but it's something people have trouble with (even I do). Making a huge train model and animating it seperately for a single cutscene wastes time AND money in something that already takes up a lot of time and spends a lot of money.

Just because you don't like Bethesda doesn't mean what they're doing is anything but smart. Sure, it's not the best way to implement a train system into your game. Sure, it's "janky", but it does the job. Obsidian probably changed the train system because they used it more in their game, and therefore could allocate extra time to making it work. I say probably because I haven't really played New Vegas that much.

>>381678326
But they're making what they're using work. That's what people who are defending this train debacle are saying.

Gamebryo is a shit engine. Bethesda know this. However, instead of making a new engine (which will cost a ton of money and time when they could be rereleasing Skyrim again or whatever), they just make do with it and use it to its full potential.

What to choose for 2d game Game Maker or Godot?

>>381678660
>>381677942
Neither of you are professional game programmers, it would be easier to assign the already made model as its own actor and would require less work in the long haul. If you either of you were programmers you'd know that guns were just wands from Oblivion and it gave Obsidian a massive amount of trouble giving weapons an actual ammo system rather than charges. The difference between Obsidian and Bethesda's programming is Obsidian had actual programmers.

>>381679150
That's because Bethesda and Obsidian wanted to make two different games. The game Obsidian wanted to make wasn't suited for the Gamebryo engine, but the game Bethesda wanted to make WAS.

Bethesda didn't know Obsidian were going to use trains in their game when they made the engine, or when they made Fallout 3. They aren't to blame.

>>381678929
Train sized hats powered by silent explosions because you can't figure out how to make anything move otherwise is the exact opposite of potential.

>>381677980
Thats not a trick, its incompetence.
A trick would be to make a cupboard out of two tables since instancing is much cheaper than rendering 2 different meshes.
But here even if half of the model is visible the whole things needs to be rendered, cant cull half a polygon and texture filtering cant be split.

Its wasted performance.

>>381678660
i am a programmer, (not video games though) and I can see why bethesda is so glitchy if they do shit like the train stuff. if your code calls to gameobject human moving another gameobject player, and the human part isn't good at path finding, then you risk overflow errors and the like when you could of spent one hour not making another fucking bucket to program a horizontal object to move on trigger.

>>381679469
But all that stuff doesn't matter for something that's only going to be used a single time. Them making a more realistic train system would be stupid for what would only be used once.

The point isn't that it's a good system in general, it's that it's a good system for the context it's used in.

>>381679041
Unity.
Godot 3 will be interesting though.

>>381679469
Bethesda has a history of taking the lazy route in most areas, which is odd considering the amount of work they DO put into other stuff. Very odd.

>>381679693
>Unity.
W-why?

>>381670460
Too bad Bethesda does neither.

>>381679783
Not him, but Unity is solid as fuck these days.

>>381680171
No it isn't and especially not for 2D. GM is much better.

>>381679692
now think about that shortcut mentality, but for the whole game. don't program doors, make them npc with door mesh and give them one degree of motion. If you don't properly program new functions but rely on the ones you already have, and the one you already have aren't meant for everything, then glitches and crash happen.

>>381679692
You know how easy it is to make something move in literally any game engine? No physics, just move. Im thinking Bethesda is filled with people who dont program, just plug shit into Gamebryo tables.

>>381680239
>No it isn't and especially not for 2D
Wrong

>>381680239
if you want to learn gmscript then go ahead.

>>381680247
Yeah, but it wasn't used for the whole game. That's the point. I'm not saying it's good practice for the entire game. Nobody is.

how do i learn to make games? what language i need to learn or tools to use?

>>381679469
there's no risk for anything really, the player character just moves along a set path with a train over it's head.

>>381678326
I'll bet you that rail car probably has like 90% of its code shared with NPCs (usually rudimentary stuff like collision detection and autonomous movement). So no, it wouldn't be a waste just re-using the asset instead of building another resource.

I just hope they aren't rendering the character mesh along with the car, that would be wasteful.

>>381667061
Fits more into Alien universe. Dark souls would be the last thing i would think of when looking at it

WARNING WARNING WARNING
THIS IS A PIRATED AGGYDAGGY
DISPERSE AT ONCE OR YOU WILL BE NODEV'D

>>381680406
GML is just C++ with rounded corners. It doesn't force you to use a shitty ECS like Unity does. It also doesn't require you to use some hacked together extension in order to get regular 2D rendering. For 3D of course it's shitty but for 2D it's almost perfect.

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>>381677980

>>381680247
Auto-saves are why Bethesda games are so buggy, not the use of actors.

If you just use manual saves, you won't encounter a single bug. It boggles the mind why Bethesda haven't removed autosaves from their games.

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>>381680812
Wow what kind of shitty programmers were these guys? How lazy and stupid can you get? They should have reprogrammed the entire game just to do the exact same thing but without faking it. I hope someone got fired for this shit.

>>381680516
imagine your game space, with a npc train head under it and god knows what other object under the "ground" of the game. if it still has npc properties like path finding , it goes one way. but the game has other game object sometimes go under the floor too, some even the players don't know about blocking the train npc. but the train must go on its path, but the path finding won't allow it now. and im not saying this happens all the time, but for the 1 out of 1000 players, this will be really annoying when it crashes the game.

>>381681356
Bethesda aren't that fucking stupid. They obviously made the train NPC follow a specific path, and stopped it from doing anything but its purpose.

>>381681540
i'm also be presumptuous here, so they might not of done as i described, but having the game crash as often as it does makes me wonder how they do their scripting.

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>>381681103
Dumb animeposter

>>381680728
what is a node v? is this a programmer joke?

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>>381677980

>>381679386
Why are they still using Gamebryo now then

>>381682905
wat

>>381683046
Because of legacy code, you don't rewrite your entire codebase, its too much trouble and so much can go wrong.

>>381683046
They've used it so much that getting rid of it would be pretty catastrophic, as >>381683246 said.

>>381683046
Mod tools.

TES construction set is mostly the same as it was in morrowind, it just got some new functions.

Change the engine = new mod tools and this is first of all, tons of work(dev tools aren't really user-friendly, there's lots of stuff like buttons that work only when proper windows or proper item is selected and documentation for this shit is usually hmmm... verbal, rather than written) and secondly, modders used to using the old ones won't be willing to migrate(remember NWN2?)

>>381683115
they only rendered whats in the view space of the camera, so it would run better will keeping the actor npc and polygons of the level.

>cutting devtime by using cheap exploits that 99,99% of the players will not spot
>normies think this is not smart
If you only knew how much smoke and mirrors literally every game is.

>>381683115
Isn't it obvious? The low processing power of the N64 necessitated some graphical tricks to make it look good and fit that many character models on screen at once. Hence, most places in towns have a pre-rendered background image on the environment instead of any actual texturing. But the player still needs a place to walk around so the actual area is a series of untextured polygons with the camera fixed on the pre-rendered image. If allowed to move freely, the camera would just expose the illusion.

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Doing some concept for a friend's project

>>381683548
>>381683802
i'm confused as to how someone was able to figure this out and capture it.

>>381683606
This.

It actually ruins games for you once you know exactly how they're assembled.

>>381683910
Looks good, anon.

>>381683959
Emulators let you move the "real" camera so you can see stuff like this. You could also just turn off the part of the rendering cycle that draws the background image.

Protip: anyone who thinks this is a bad solution has never worked in industry

How feasible would it be to program a game entirely in Scheme LISP ?

>>381683959
>how someone was able to figure this out
All games with pre-rendered backgrounds work this way.

>>381667061
Bane?

>>381683994
Actually it lets me appreciate them on a whole other level. I really enjoy dissecting stuff like this. I feel the same way about movies, often finding out behing-the-scenes information can make it much more impressive.

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>try and just like make game
>get overwhelmed by the simplest of issues
3 years and all I have is a fucking moving sprite on a screen.
Eventually, though. Eventually.

>>381684116
Thanks anon, still not done but in the home stretch

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>>381679150
>If you either of you were programmers you'd know that guns were just wands from Oblivion and it gave Obsidian a massive amount of trouble giving weapons an actual ammo system rather than charges.
Who could have guessed that adding a load of new functionality would require massive refactoring?

>>381684529
keep going anon, all you need to do is learn programming basics, game design, a story, learn to use a pre built game engine, make art assets, and a soundtrack. it's gonna be a piece of cake.

>>381684295
yes, i meant literally how they were able to make the camera move in such a way to reveal what's in the webm.
>>381684158
so they did it through a debugger built into the emulator, i'm assuming? i've been able to do this in a few psx games.

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>>381683115
Resident Evil, Final Fantasy and Parasite Eve did the same thing during their PS1-days.

Pre-rendered still-frames between invisible prefabs and animated models was how you made the best-looking games for that gen.

>>381685046
The image is being calculated and redrawn each frame based on the information stored, such as models, camera angles and so on. One you know where the values that represent the camera are stored you can easily mess with them to "trick" the game into calculating the image based on the new values.

>>381684529
>tfw I can design levels and game systems, write stories and come up with mechanics, but I can't code or do art

If I could somehow manage to assemble a team who could cover my weaknesses, it'd be great.

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Currently working on a soulslike horror game with 2 other guys and we're looking for an artist
Its our first game if your interested to help up send me an email

[email protected]

>>381667061

Doesn't fit Dark Souls at all.

>>381684295
>>381683959
>>381683548
>>381682905
How would this work with modern games and will it help with running it?

>>381685747
the world has no shortage of idea guys you useless fuck. learn how to code or something, it's not that hard

how do you know you are good at doing any of the things you say if you've never been a part of a team?

I am going to try make sports game for mobiles with zero expirience by the end of the year.
Tight now I am going to read ttorials on Godot and hopefully make some placeholder sprites.

I see how it will go from there.

>>381685849
>Currently working on a soulslike-
Dropped.

>>381685747
i would love to see your level designs, stores, game system and mechanics.

>>381666594
t. uncreative nodev

>>381685973
It would work the same way. The issue is that you can't perform things like advanced lighting on a fixed image since there is no representation of the objects depicted in the image to work out what it should look like.

Things like skyboxes and prebaked reflections are basically a more advanced version of this technique.

>>381666209
I'm reading through the Game Maker manual. I have a small game idea that I put on hiatus because there's just so much programming knowledge I don't have. This is despite me making the scope as small as I could. That said, I hope to work my way back up to it.

In the mean time I'm idea-guying a fan-game on the side, and designing levels Mario Maker 3DS.

>>381685973
Pre-rendered backgrounds are largely made obsolete by LOD's and culling.
Games can handle polys now.

>>381686024
I've tried making various games in the past by myself to see what could work and I've written out RPG systems on paper and tested them by allocating figurines stats and having them fight turn based battles against eachother.

The only project I ever managed to complete was a simplistic 4-directional shooter I made when I was 11 from stolen Contra and Castlevania sprites.

From that, I learned that tackling any project that's really ambitious is impossible alone.

>>381666209
One big trick Fromsoft did was have the exact same game 4 times with little changes here and there and no one hardly noticed.

>>381686483
Actually you can light static images if you have a seperate map containing the "depth" of each pixel in the texture, effectively generating a 3D scene. This scene shown in this gif has 4 polys, one for the BG and one for the character.
https://media.giphy.com/media/l1BgSHcHGGGhCcgXm/giphy.gif

>>381687515
I mean TWO for the BG and TWO for the character, sorry.

>>381687515
interesting,not sameguy but, how would you bake this map in let's say, blender?

>>381687515
That's neat and I've seen similar stuff done with sprites but its still not as effective as models. Ultimately, lighting is based on geometry so the best way to do it in a versatile and dynamic way is to store that geometry.