Aspiring 19 year old video game designer shares pre-alpha build of his game (me) - Games

[b]UPDATE: VERSION 003 IS NOW LIVE! 8/15/17 2:05PM[/b] Hi, my name is Peter and I am an aspiring video game designer, working for the indie game team "Decimind Studios". I have a couple games being designed, and I'm making this specific game in my spare time. Our current major project is "Regnorum". That is in pre-development. We don't have much to show off at this time. Anyway-- this game; Don't worry-- the different colored balls are just placeholders while I make the gameplay. I want the gameplay to make the game great, not the graphics. ALBUM: [url]http://imgur.com/a/Fdlt1[/url] [img]http://i.imgur.com/i9VSQro.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/Xxvkteg.jpg[/img] Please stress test the game. Try to break it, and report any bugs, make suggestions. I'm hoping to make this bigger and bigger and polished as time goes on, eventually making a kickstarter. The stress test at this point is important because I want the "carnage" to be persistent-- meaning (soon to be implemented) blood and dead bodies, as well as (currently implemented) bullet casings and magazines stay on the floor, and never disappear. Super taxing on your computer if they aren't coded properly. [img]http://i.imgur.com/7SUDUO5.jpg[/img] If you could continually fire and reload the SMG and other guns, and time how long it takes for your computer to start to lag, and post it to here (and include your computer specs), that would help me optimize it a ton. Stress testing on my computer is like telling an olympic benchpresser to lift just the bar. [img]http://i.imgur.com/jp0oMhN.jpg[/img] This game is being based off an old webplayer game I started back when I was in... middle school(?), using a visual scripter called "scratch". If you want to see what I'm aiming for here, this is the most recent and most likely highest-production value (but still pretty low) build: [url]https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/68659350/[/url] It's cringey as all hell, but someone would have found it anyway. I'm using the same profile handle and game title, afterall. Yes I am aware that build is broken after the first round. So with my deep dark and foreboding past out of the way, I present: KARMA on unity engine; the best thing a 19 year old game designer can hope for. [img]http://i.imgur.com/F75Nid4.jpg[/img] I am mainly releasing this in its current state to see how much I have to optimize the core components of the game. Annnd test for bugs. *cough* and try to cheaply get followers *cough cough* The next update I hope add a health system for the enemies, the barricade, and you. Might take days, might take weeks. I'll keep you guys updated if you ask. It should also be noted the different colored balls are placeholders for the characters, as well as the capsules representing bullet casings and shotgun shells. The game is FAR from complete, and I am hoping to get feedback to improve the game as time goes on. There is now a UI when you press ESCAPE, with a working quit button-- so you can feel free now to play full screen. If you're expecting a fully made (or even "Early Access" type) game, it isn't quite there yet-- I hope it will one day get there though! In short, it's a glorified tech demo-- if even that. It's only purpose at this point is to have people test its limits so when I move on to gameplay, the "feel" is there-- I want the game to be super responsive and for you to *feel* the guns firing. I think that is everything. Feel free to ask me stuff here for any relevant questions. I hope to hear back if anyone has constructive criticism! [img]http://i.imgur.com/2bOUsIf.jpg[/img] Thank you so so very much for reading this block of text, and more so if you download and test the game :) [b]LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE GAME:[/b] [url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9C_C4RuIvpBSkRiTE51ellfMU0/view?usp=sharing[/url] [b]CONTROLS:[/b] The first thing you will notice when you start it up is a black ball in possession of multiple guns. Move the ball with the up and down arrow keys, and shoot with the spacebar. You reload with the R key-- and with the shotgun, tap the R key repeatedly to reload. The shotgun will stop reloading when fully loaded. Guns take longer to reload if you've spent the entire magazine. Use the number keys (1-3) to change weapons. Press V to melee. The Y key swaps your perspective-- you can see further if you're viewing the field vertically, but you move slower-- because this is supposed to simulate aiming down sights. Press the ESCAPE key to quit the game, or spawn enemies. The store does not work yet. AGAIN: I want to reiterate that I am aware there is not a lot of content-- I am posting so various computers with varying levels of power can respond to me about performance-- this will help me set up options for keeping bullet casings and magazines rendered for a certain amount of time. [b]UPDATE LOG:[/b] [b]v003: I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOWWWW aka ITS TIME TO STOP.[/b] 8/15/2017 2:05 PM [img]http://i.imgur.com/i9VSQro.jpg[/img] -Added in a barricade, just aesthetic at the moment sadly. -The camera change now works. Press Y to change perspective, at the cost of movement speed. This simulates aiming down a sight. -Melee no longer looks like *TOTAL* cancer. -Pressing escape opens a menu to spawn (or despawn enemies), and you can actually quit the game now like a normal game. [b]v002: Enemies galore![/b] 8/15/2017 12:30 AM [img]http://i.imgur.com/4UjyNOb.jpg[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/HmbBpMS.jpg[/img] -Added 3 enemy types-- I think you should figure out quite easily their differences! -changed color scheme -Added laser sights. Trust me. It was way too hard without it. -Player displays unequipped weapons -Added crappy looking melee-- press V [b]PREVIOUS VERSIONS:[/b] V001: [url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9C_C4RuIvpBZ2dLMnBHXzY1UG8/view?usp=sharing[/url] 8/14/2017 6:00 [b]Credits[/b] Credits to Anderson-Cardoso859 for making the visual scripting base that I am using.

EDIT: I know there isn't much there but is that what all the disagree's are about? Sorry guys! It was something I started just a couple days ago-- I've been learning off tutorials and I'm learning as I'm going :( The game will get more content soon I coded in holstered weapons-- if you aren't using a gun, it's on your player. All weapons now have laser sights, for ease of aiming. Currently I am coding the enemy-- the basic AI is there at this point, but I'm having trouble with hit detection. Will probably have an update out some time within the day, maybe tomorrow at the latest.

You need to post videos and images of your game if you want people to even show interest. Put yourself in our shoes: would you be interested if all you saw was a wall of text and some links?

Fair point. Getting on that now. Thank you for the constructive criticism! [editline]15th August 2017[/editline] There. Some variety added to the block of text. Like the game itself, there isn't much to show off *yet*. But as I add more features, they will be added.

Verson 002 is LIVE! Check out the link in the original post!

What kind of future plans do you have for the game? There should be something to work towards about making the game unique/interesting to play, rather than be just another bog-standard shooter. I find the name of the game to be very interesting, so it'd be a shame if the game didn't live up to its quality :v:

[QUOTE=Bordellimies;52575062]What kind of future plans do you have for the game? There should be something to work towards about making the game unique/interesting to play, rather than be just another bog-standard shooter. I find the name of the game to be very interesting, so it'd be a shame if the game didn't live up to its quality :v:[/QUOTE] The first iterations of this game was kind of made after I played flash games like "The Last Stand", "Storm the House", and Warfare 1917 when I was a child. I would like think of this eventually becoming a flash game gone over the top. It wouldn't be too hard to implement strafing runs later down the line, grenades, a store with additional weapon types and barricades-- maybe being able to hire people to help you-- it wouldn't be too hard to code AI that targets the closest enemy and starts firing at them. Might get a little cluttered behind your barricade-- so maybe some sort of sniper tower? A barbwire backdrop would be nice-- I'll see if I can find one. A helicoptor dropping in, spraying down the area with a giant gatling gun, then dropping a giant missile would be bad ass. I'll see what I can do down the line about that. Yeah, I thought a long time thinking about that name-- when I was in middle school. KARMA stands for Kill.Attack.Recon.(and)Major.Assault. I might make it a little more "politically correct". I don't think any citizen of the city you are defending (what whatever that little guy is guarding) would call themselves good guys with a team like that. Maybe Communications.And.Reconissance--Munitions.And.Support. CARMAS? Although... I suppose it would be interesting to play as the *bad guy*. Yeah, since when do good guys drop giant missiles and perform strafing runs on people right outside their own city?

[QUOTE=JasonChang55;52575079] Yeah, I thought a long time thinking about that name-- when I was in middle school. KARMA stands for Kill.Attack.Recon.(and)Major.Assault. I might make it a little more "politically correct". I don't think any citizen of the city you are defending (what whatever that little guy is guarding) would call themselves good guys with a team like that. Maybe Communications.And.Reconissance--Munitions.And.Support. CARMAS? [/QUOTE] I'm not interested in the game at all but I just want to say keep it as KARMA if the only other option is CARMAS

[QUOTE=gnoob;52575093]I'm not interested in the game at all but I just want to say keep it as KARMA if the only other option is CARMAS[/QUOTE] Duly noted. Might changed the name to something else if I do decide to try and go for a more realistic name. But it *is* a video game... hm... Maybe I should give Jack Thompson something to cry about. What do you guys think? Additional note: FINALLY SQUASHED THAT SUNUVABICH! The stupid camera bug is no more. The next build will have horizontal and vertical camera functionality... although... vertical camera is easy... too easy... I might have to restrict it to assault rifles and sniper rifles only-- or implement an optic needed to enable it. Hell, maybe make the laser sight a purchasable too.

V003 is now live! Feel free to give it a looksee if anyone is interested!

There's not really much to show here. For an experienced dev this would barely be a proof of concept made in like an hour or less of work. Not to discourage you, but rather to say there's really no reason to make a thread to show this off yet. Wait until you've made something interesting. Don't worry too much about performance and optimizations until your game is in the beta phase (aka the gameplay, levels, etc are all pretty much done). If your computer can run it, it's fine until then. Not to mention it's Unity - you don't have an entire engine to optimize, just your own scripts/models/etc. Right now that's like, a handful of things at most. [editline].[/editline] Just read in your OP you're using a visual scripting language. Drop that crutch ASAP. Yeah visual scripting is kinda cool for people who don't know how to code to get [I]something[/I] going, but you're going to benefit a [B]lot[/B] more from just biting the bullet and learning C#. C# is a great first language for beginners to dive into. Make that your first priority. There are plenty of resources online and in text for learning C#, or even learning C# as a part of using Unity.

[QUOTE=Dr. Evilcop;52577174]There's not really much to show here. For an experienced dev this would barely be a proof of concept made in like an hour or less of work. Not to discourage you, but rather to say there's really no reason to make a thread to show this off yet. Wait until you've made something interesting. Don't worry too much about performance and optimizations until your game is in the beta phase (aka the gameplay, levels, etc are all pretty much done). If your computer can run it, it's fine until then. Not to mention it's Unity - you don't have an entire engine to optimize, just your own scripts/models/etc. Right now that's like, a handful of things at most. [editline].[/editline] Just read in your OP you're using a visual scripting language. Drop that crutch ASAP. Yeah visual scripting is kinda cool for people who don't know how to code to get [I]something[/I] going, but you're going to benefit a [B]lot[/B] more from just biting the bullet and learning C#. C# is a great first language for beginners to dive into. Make that your first priority. There are plenty of resources online and in text for learning C#, or even learning C# as a part of using Unity.[/QUOTE] ive tried about 10 different times to learn. I never could figure out the syntax and collection using.. like for the life of me. But I do understand the structure--more so now, so maybe now that I've made some basic visual scripts in unity, I can migrate over to "adding" on the whole syntax and collection using bit. I kind of noticed everyone tries to optimize the game at the end-- and in the meantime, everyone bitches and moans about the game being laggy. I.E. Rust, esp in legacy. That was one of the biggest complaints anyone ever had, and I got frustrated my beast couldn't run it-- just because it was unoptimized. This is a side project-- so minimal risk-- I want to try something new. I want to optimize it from the start, so even your grandma's computer can play it from point A. Optimization and gameplay + variety over all. EDIT: Yup. Nope. Maybe I am expecting too much. I was thinking it would be a 1:1 transfer. Like "this code is equal to this block, so you just stick it here and you're good to go" but it's gonna take some more learning than that. I'll have to manage with this crutch for now but learn how to use normal code at the same time. EDIT 2: THERES SO MANY BRACKETS WHY EDIT 3: I'm going to *TRY* to use both. If it can be done using a visual script, then so be it. If not, then time to hit the books. STAND CORRECTION: IT ISN'T THE CODE THAT SCREWS ME UP, ITS THE STRUCTURE. PUTTING EVERYTHING TOGETHER. I GUESS I HAVE TO PRETEND LIKE THIS IS ITS OWN LANGUAGE AND NOT ENGLISH. EDIT 4: MY GOD I AM HAVING A CRISIS OVER MY MENTAL CAPACITY AND CAPABILITIES TRYING TO FIGURE THIS OUT GOD HELP ME ALL BECAUSE I CANT GET AN ENEMY TO DETECT THAT IT JUST GOT HIT WITH A PREFAB. No worries, the head coder on our team is teaching me and walking me through the structure of everything.

To be frank, your project isn't going to go anywhere big using the visual scripting language. It seems like you have big aspirations, but where visual languages fall apart is doing anything complex. It very quickly turns into a cluster fuck that's impossible to manage. I would stop your current project and just dedicate yourself to learning C#. Drop the crutch. Trying to learn with the goal of just getting whatever you need done at the moment done clearly isn't working. You need a good foundation. So again, go find a book or a good web resource and follow it start to finish. C# in Unity is actually pretty dead simple since you pass so much shit by strings and it handles most of the parameter passing, object creation, etc for you just by dragging and dropping things in the UI. Past that, again, stop worrying about optimization so early in development. You're just creating more work for yourself. You mentioned yourself you see these early access games that are so poorly optimized - but did you ever consider [I]why[/I] so many early access games are like that? Surely at least some of those dev teams know a thing or two more about development than both the general populus and you. When you're in a stage of development where nothing is finalized, you're going to be creating a lot of new things and changing a lot of things you've already made. Now imagine if you're doing what you're trying to do now, where you optimize everything as soon as you make it - what happens when you now need to change that thing you just optimized? It's going to be difficult to easily make changes without breaking things, and you're going to have to redo a lot of optimization work. What if you waste a bunch of time optimizing something only for it to be cut from the game? Finally, how much time are you spending on optimization that could have been spent on making the game better or expanding the scope of the game? Here's a good stack overflow thread regarding when to optimize: [url]https://stackoverflow.com/questions/385506/when-is-optimisation-premature[/url] Tl;dr Produce functional, easy to understand code first. You can keep optimization in mind before you even start coding (for example, you may choose to use one sorting function over another because it's obviously faster - this is a design optimization rather than a code optimization), but don't focus on it during the actual code creation. Then, once your program is functional, profile it to see where the most time is being spent in executing your program. Then, focus on optimizing the areas of your program that take the most time to execute. There's a rule of thumb for optimization - 80% of the execution time is taken by 20% of the code. Therefore, optimizing that small section of your code will give you by far the biggest net benefit to performance. However, until your code is more or less complete (e.g. you're in the beta phase), it's difficult to pin down exactly what chunks of code are going to make up that 20% in the final product, because everything can and probably will change, as mentioned earlier. Not to mention optimizing visual language code is way more tedious than real code.

[QUOTE=Dr. Evilcop;52578392]To be frank, your project isn't going to go anywhere big using the visual scripting language. It seems like you have big aspirations, but where visual languages fall apart is doing anything complex. It very quickly turns into a cluster fuck that's impossible to manage. I would stop your current project and just dedicate yourself to learning C#. Drop the crutch. Trying to learn with the goal of just getting whatever you need done at the moment done clearly isn't working. You need a good foundation. So again, go find a book or a good web resource and follow it start to finish. C# in Unity is actually pretty dead simple since you pass so much shit by strings and it handles most of the parameter passing, object creation, etc for you just by dragging and dropping things in the UI. Past that, again, stop worrying about optimization so early in development. You're just creating more work for yourself. You mentioned yourself you see these early access games that are so poorly optimized - but did you ever consider [I]why[/I] so many early access games are like that? Surely at least some of those dev teams know a thing or two more about development than both the general populus and you. When you're in a stage of development where nothing is finalized, you're going to be creating a lot of new things and changing a lot of things you've already made. Now imagine if you're doing what you're trying to do now, where you optimize everything as soon as you make it - what happens when you now need to change that thing you just optimized? It's going to be difficult to easily make changes without breaking things, and you're going to have to redo a lot of optimization work. What if you waste a bunch of time optimizing something only for it to be cut from the game? Finally, how much time are you spending on optimization that could have been spent on making the game better or expanding the scope of the game? Here's a good stack overflow thread regarding when to optimize: [url]https://stackoverflow.com/questions/385506/when-is-optimisation-premature[/url] Tl;dr Produce functional, easy to understand code first. You can keep optimization in mind before you even start coding (for example, you may choose to use one sorting function over another because it's obviously faster - this is a design optimization rather than a code optimization), but don't focus on it during the actual code creation. Then, once your program is functional, profile it to see where the most time is being spent in executing your program. Then, focus on optimizing the areas of your program that take the most time to execute. There's a rule of thumb for optimization - 80% of the execution time is taken by 20% of the code. Therefore, optimizing that small section of your code will give you by far the biggest net benefit to performance. However, until your code is more or less complete (e.g. you're in the beta phase), it's difficult to pin down exactly what chunks of code are going to make up that 20% in the final product, because everything can and probably will change, as mention earlier. Not to mention optimizing visual language code is way more tedious than real code.[/QUOTE] Yeah-- I'm trying to learn it bit by bit right now-- our head coder is helping me understand structure-- and I am applying it to stuff that will further this project. Hit detection is what we are currently working on, I'll hopefully have an update out in the next day or so-- then I can work on them coming in waves. And that is a very good point-- the optimization problems must be coming from more complex systems than bullet casings and enemy movement in other games. Thank you for that info-- a lot of the problem was I was overthinking unity-- now that our head dev is helping me everything is a lot more managable.

Good luck bud, hope ya make something cool.

Should I keep this open, just so progress on the game can be tracked by the people who were talking about thinking the name was interesting and whatnot? Might be redundant to just make another forum post. Plus it will act as a nice changelog.

I would wait for you to much make more progress, then you can update the OP and bump the thread. Unless a moderator think otherwise.

Post what you make here - [url]https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1515555[/url] This subforum is more for existing games rather than gamedev anyway. Just keep your posts short and you can post pretty much whatever progress you want there. P.s., I PM'd you a useful resource. [editline].[/editline] Updated link to correct thread.

Where would you say minimum progress would be? I would personally think that when there is waves, a working store, and money system and whatnot-- it's ready?

[QUOTE=JasonChang55;52578516]Where would you say minimum progress would be? I would personally think that when there is waves, a working store, and money system and whatnot-- it's ready?[/QUOTE] When you would be comfortable presenting it as a release to stand on its own merits, instead of accompany by the large amounts of supplementary information, proposed goals, controller layout, and other information needed to make sense of the game. Feedback from post your wip will help give you indication of when.

[QUOTE=YOMIURA;52578520]When you would be comfortable presenting it as a release to stand on its own merits, instead of accompany by the large amounts of supplementary information, proposed goals, controller layout, and other information needed to make sense of the game. Feedback from post your wip will help give you indication of when.[/QUOTE] For making its own thread/bumping this one in the future for it yeah this^ For posting in that existing thread I linked, basically any time you make something interesting you can post it if you please, as long as you don't do a huge wall of text. A screenshot and a couple sentences describing what you made will usually suffice. Lurk in the thread for a while and see what other people post to get an idea. That thread is essentially a general discussion for game development. [editline].[/editline] Also, wouldn't be a bad idea to upload a profile pic. Helps a lot with recognizing people around here. [editline]15th August 2017[/editline] Oh shit, I linked you to the wrong thread. This is the one - [url]https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1515555[/url] The other one was a programming general one, which may also be nice, but this one is the gamedev one. Note the "acceptable posts" section of the OP.