fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Just Start Your Goals
By: Usama Manzoor
Tags: Smart Goals, Game Design, Life Goals, Game Development, Just Start

I had no idea about smart goals but after taking one of the courses of Amal Fellowship Program, I came to know. In order to achieve your dream goals, you have to divide them in small, specific, measurable and time bound tasks. Which you can do in specific time to reach your goal or to progress one step towards your goal.

It was just to let you know what Smart Goals really mean are and why I am writing this all?

Now I would like to clear that what my Goal is? What I want in my life?

When I was in Intermediate, I had this thought. After graduation from a reputed University with good grades, You will immediately get a good job and it should be! we spend 16 to 17 years in studies and after that we don’t get a good job, it hurts. Same happened with my brother. For more than 5 years after his graduation with CGPA of 3.8 from University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore in the field of Petroleum and Gas Engineering. He didn’t get a good job. It was a difficult time for him as well as our family. So from that day I made my mind to get a well paid job in my own field before or just after graduation. So my goal is to work as a Game developer (as I am from Computer Engineering field).

So what I have done so far to reach my goal?

I have been doing an internship for 2 months as Game developer in a well-known company of Pakistan named Mega Success Pakistan. Now I have achieved one step to reach my goal but there is much left. I have to work and learn as well to become a pro developer For which, besides of helping my company in their projects I want to develop my own game. I was thinking for it for many days but was hell busy with office work but now I have decided to work on it side by side and develop a 2D game.

Here is my smart goal is to develop a full working game in these 3 months of my Amal fellowship program. And upload it on Playstore

I have just started my project and this week I will make the Game scene in which there will be a plate and moving horizontally with buttons and also generate random balls from above that will be catchable. Along with the pause buttons and score and life texts

So, what is required from you, You have to suggest me a good name of this game “the scenario of this game is to catch the balls, if we miss the ball we will lose our 1 life”. We can change the balls with fruits or something else and can also change plate with basket. Suggest me your ideas what you want in this game or what must be the difficulty level or what you want me to add in other levels of this game.

Thanks in advance! and waiting for your priceless comments and suggestions….
Use trigger to fulfill the level upgrade experience
By: Mini World Dev Captain
Tags: Game Design, Sandbox Game, Mwba, Trigger, Game Development

If your map has level system and you want the players has a good experience from level growing, you can try to add some effects while players upgrade the level.

We will take one level system to explain how to make the experience more better.

This is the level system setting: Players get level experience →Level upgrade→Upgrade effect show up(effect + voice) →players body is more bigger and get some special body effects.

Let start to set up the trigger for the level system.

The body of baby players is small, they need to upgrade their level by eating the food and getting bigger and getting different effect.

Follow the below step, you will learn how to realize this function.

We create a trigger named ‘Eat donus’.

When any players eat the donut, then the players get experience. Below is the action detailed information:

Do you remember we set up the level experience system in above Map setting section???Map setting:

In this case, players will upgrade 1 level after they get 100 experience.

Now, let’s set up different triggers for different level.

Trigger — Level 0

We initial baby players boby size. Because level 0 baby is small, so the size we set is 0.5.

Trigger — Level 1

Baby will get bigger and body effect on level 1.

Trigger — Level 2

Baby will get bigger and bigger body effect on level 2. Remember to remove the repeated effect since you have added before in level 1 trigger.
Wading into the Unknown Career, Again.
By: Kate Hunt
Tags: Stay At Home Mom, Self, Game Design, Pandemic Diaries, Career Change

Wading into the Unknown Career, Again.

Career changes are scary things, I should know I’ve done it 4 or 5 times now. It’s amazing how fast you can go from expert of A to beginner of B. It’s not just in careers though, it can be with anything where experience doesn’t transfer well. It reminds me of a story I told my preteen the other day. I was swimmer every summer growing up. Swimming two practices a day, 5 days a week. Getting faster and more golden tan as each week passed. Then, mid August would roll around and field hockey would start. Certainly my summer of exercise would help me on the field. Nope. It felt like zero translated. I could swim an hour easily, pushing through hard sets, but I could barely run a mile without stopping.

So here I am again on the brink of a career change. Feeling like even if I mastered the last gig none of it will transfer to the next. My job vanished in mid March. Turns out they don’t need substitute teachers when school is virtual. After I got the email that school was online, I got a robocall saying all my upcoming jobs were cancelled. I was back to stay at home mom again.

I went from chemist to stay at home mom back in 2012 when an out-of-state move meant I couldn’t keep working. After a few years I pivoted to professional home organizer, then to substitute elementary school teacher. It’s hard to say which parts of my chemistry background has helped with what. But after months of being trapped at home I’m itching to pivot again. This time I’m turning a hobby hopefully into something else. No, it’s not writing.

I started designing a card game last fall pre-pandemic, and with no substitute teaching gigs on the horizon I’ve decided to self-publish my card game. Surprise! Guess what? Organizing people’s pantries, teaching 4th grade math and doing gas chromatography – none of them have much to do with the toy and game industry. I’m a novice through and through. So I’m doing my research, asking for advice, reading and reading and reading. The thing I’m learning? I’m a tiny fish in a great big ocean. And while it’s scary and feels a little bit like Monopoly- Go directly jail. Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200. I know that if I just roll the dice next turn, and the next, I might get a shot at a win.
How to use Mininature to simulate the cooking effect?
By: Mini World Dev Captain
Tags: Game Design, Sandbox Game, Mwba, Trigger, Game Development

How to use Mininature to simulate the cooking effect?

The most complex process is how to restore the cooking process.

You can see the below gif picture shows the donuts steam process.

So, how to simulate the process of steaming food? ?

We will take a simple example to explain, let’s follow the below steps to learn how to realize it.

Firstly, we go to check the effect library to see what kind of effect we can use for the steam effect.

We found the Smoke 23 effect is the same effect as the picture shows.

Let’s make a tank without water:

Then we make a tank filled with water: we pull the water in the tank.

We can put a donut in the water.

Now we get three different models of the tank, each model can represent one stage of the cook.

After we prepare the miniatures, we can make the corresponding block plugins. Plug-in basic tutorial

Place the tank 1 on the floor. Add a trigger to change the block models from tank 1 to tank 2 when players hold a water Iron Bucket to click the block tank 1.

More tutorials about the triggers:

Trigger Ads — Get Weapons Ads

Trigger — Click the block to get healing effect

Trigger — Keep refreshing items in one place

Trigger Tank1-tank2:

Let’s add a trigger to let the water boil after a while.

Firstly we add a timer named : cookstage

Timer Tutorial

The timer will start to count when the block tank 1 changes to tank 2, so we will add an action to start the timer in the trigger ‘Tank1-tank2’:

Create a new trigger to control the water boil effect.

Then we create a new trigger to realize that player put the donuts in the tank to cook:

Add a new timer:

Run the new timer in the action.

Add a trigger to drop the donut. After 3 seconds(the countdown timer count from 3 to 0), the cooking will be done and the donut will be dropped down on the ground. The tank will turn back to the original mode.

Now we can see the final cooking effect:
Minimax Algorithm in Tic-Tac-Toe: Adversarial Search Example
By: Damir Temir
Tags: AI, Game Design, Artificial Intelligence, Minimax, Data Science

Today, after years of school and a year and a half of college, I can finally say that I implemented an algorithm that can play Tic-Tac-Toe without ever losing. It is called the Minimax Decision Rule, which is a type of Adversarial Search, meaning that this algorithm faces an opponent that is playing against the machine. For example, in Tic-Tac-Toe, the AI plays against a human; the AI also knows the complete state of the game (it can see the entire situation, unlike the game of Poker), which is a requirement for the Minimax Algorithm.

Demo From My GitHub Repo

Minimax uses each state’s representation, labeling a winning condition as 1, a losing situation as -1, and a neutral condition as 0. So, getting into details might make it sound quite complicated (at least that’s how it sounds for me), but let’s imagine a situation in which you play Tic-Tac-Toe against yourself. You would probably want to maximize your score and minimize your component’s score (which is also you, lol), hence the name Minimax. The same you do when you play for the other side, picking the action to maximize your score and minimize your opponent’s score. What you would probably end up doing is you would probably start considering each and every movement you can do and the possible move your opponent might do. Calculating each and every possible outcome is the cornerstone of Minimax because that helps the AI pick the best action, which is also worst for the opponent.
The Copier — Build the map quickly
By: Mini World Dev Captain
Tags: Sandbox Game, Game Design, Mwba, Game Development

The Copier — Build the map quickly

There are many tools that can help you build the map, like the Terrain Editor, the Area Duplication Block. Even some of the tools are relatively complicated to use and also seem more flexible and multi-functional, but we can’t tell which one is the best, we only pick the best choice based on the situation.

The function of Copier

Copier can quickly fill a region with the same block, it will be often used for walls building, paving. Compared to the Terrain Editor, you don’t need to calculate the Length, the width and Height of the region that you need to pave the block (like the below picture), so it’s much easier to use it.

How to use it?

There are four steps to use it:

1. Confirm the region

You should confirm the region that you need to fill with the block.

2. Confirm a target block

Find the block you want to fill in the region.

3. Put the Copier on the edge

Put the Copier at one corner of the region, and then put the target block on top of the copier.

4. Put the Copier on the other edge
Hello World!
By: Cut, Paste Games
Tags: Game Design, Design, New, Hello, Games

Hi, I’m Mike!

Welcome to Cut and Paste Games, the repository of my thoughts, and other brain things, about games and game design. This blog will feature reviews, analyses and other general impressions about the board and video games in my life and on my mind.

My goals, beyond the general practice of getting my thoughts out of my head and onto a screen, are to share my love for games and enthusiasm for game design by taking a look under the hood of different designs and their mechanics, and to help guide people, newbies and veterans to games alike, through the gaming wilderness by offering reviews and closer looks at some of the different game out there and why I think they are, or not, worth your time and/or money.

I guess that’s all I wanted to say for now…

Have fun!

p.s. Here’s a shelfie
Горький опыт вдохновения. Часть II.
By: Nikita Goncharuk
Tags: Game Design, Game Development, Storytelling, Games, Tutorial

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
LA PARABOLA DEL RAGIONIER VITI: GIOCO E AUTORITÀ
By: We Are Müesli
Tags: Game Design, Giochi

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
How to make the item can be picked and placed wherever you want?
By: Mini World Dev Captain
Tags: Game Design, Sandbox Game, Mwba, Game Development, Trigg

How to make the item can be picked and placed wherever you want?

We will often pick and place the items in game to have the game interaction experience. For example, in the restaurant game, the chef will need to place the dishes on the table. So how to realize this function? Please follow the below example.

Place the dishes on the table

Because we are making a table that the chef can place the dishes on, the desk should be the block type.

Let’s start to make the table.

Firstly we make the table model. The table should be bigger than one block size, so we will need to use several miniature workbench.

Then we create four table miniature components.

We place down the table components in order on the ground.

Then we use the Miniature Combination

to combine the components together. Miniature Combination Tool

We use the donut miniature to create a new block.

Let’s create a new trigger set named ‘Place dishes’. It will be mainly used to assemble the triggers for placing the dishes.

Now we create a new trigger named ‘Place the donut’, and set the details like below:

Because the dishes will be placed on the block the players click, so there is a offset from the block. The Action — Create Block parameters should be set like below.

Take the dishes from the table

Let’s create a new trigger set to manage the triggers for the functions that get dishes from the table.

Let’s set the first get-dishes trigger: When players click on the block -> Determine whether the block is a donut block -> If the block type is donut, then remove the block and the players get a donut.
Strategic
By: David Negrin
Tags: Screenwriting, Game Design, Creative Process, Writing Tips, Filmmaking

A newsletter about creative process.

Welcome to STRATEGIC a newsletter about creative process. For any artist, in any medium, from any background. Filled with examples and explanations of process, craft, and ritual to help you create more often and finish sooner.

David Negrin is a Professor, Screenwriter, Game Designer, VR Creator, Arts Non-Profit Founder, and Host of #TheScriptPodcast.

SUBSCRIBE here! http://blog.DavidNegrin.com
Telling The Story — ADR. “We didn’t have initial plans for…
By: Jer Wallis
Tags: Black Banshee Studios, Gamedev, Game Design, Dialogue, Indie Game

We’re All Going To Die will be releasing in February 2021.

“We didn’t have initial plans for dialogue in We’re All Going To Die,” according to sound designer Anthony Gentile. “It wasn’t until halfway through the projects that the audio team was able to forecast the possibility. Until then, there was a lot of sound to do and we wanted to prioritize the overall experience. Once our staff grew, it opened doors that we hadn’t been able to consider before.” Character dialogue is an oft forgotten audio asset that turns a third person game into a first person experience. Many games use it to advance story, continue plot or to interact in a way that controllers and keyboards cannot. For a game like We’re All Going To Die, the dialogue didn’t add narrative enhancement, but character enhancement. “There’s no story behind WAGTD,” said lead writer Maxwill Taylor. “But with the player characters, we were able to inject some personality using dialogue lines.”

The process started with writing the lines for characters to use during various interactions. “I met with (product owner) Tyler (Baker) to see the direction he wanted to go (with the dialogue),” said Taylor. “He gave me the keywords that he wanted us to think of. He wanted characters to be cocky, sarcastic, playful. When I was writing the lines, I was imagining them in game, how they would be interacting.” Part of the process included imagining the lines in use. “I also considered the overall goal of the game, which is getting people together. Friends trash talk, it’s just part of gaming. So I incorporated that.”

Recording the audio fell to primary ADR (automated dialogue replacement) engineer Anthony Gentile. “Getting the right ADR started with getting the right person,” said Gentile. “I chose someone who would fit the character attitude. We had a really comfortable vibe which made the recording session.” While the scripted dialogue gave a place to start, Gentile found the comfort level helped his voice actor get into character more. “A lot of it was emphasizing the emotions of the character. You want it to have some attitude. We cut several lines and added a couple of improved lines because you could tell the character was having a good time.”

The flexibility was a welcome addition to the project. “The ADR lines we initially wrote could have been more flexible,” said Taylor. “We wrote about 20 lines of dialogue, but so many of the best takes were not ones we had scripted. It’s more memorable that way.”
Taking a Breather!
By: Mark Bohuslav
Tags: C Sharp Programming, Game Design, Video Game Devlopment, Unity

Aloha team, I was ready to move on from the shooter but today I did do a few bug fixes on my Shooter first before moving on since they were nagging me. Stopped the animation from moving on the boss when he died and fixed an issue with my units teleporting. The sound issues I’ll revisit later on when I learn about audio plug ins, etc. After that I watched a 4.5 hour video on C# and read a few articles on programming. It was a nice break from racking my brain trying to figure out all the crazy ideas I wanted to implement in the game.

I needed a break from the grind and the videos were a nice change of pace and also very very helpful. I learned a lot of new cool instructions and methods that I can use in the future. I decided to stop counting my days as well since it was putting undue pressure on my obsessive mind! This is a lifelong journey after all…so who is counting anyway. I’m going to kind of go with the flow this week and then jump into the cinematography when I am ready for the next step. Its nice to know that we still have access to the course material after Dec 28th so I can continue on and eventually complete all 12 modules. I really am enjoying my time and learning so much, I truly hope for everybody’s sake that the State does approve additional funding so everyone can stay engaged and focused on learning Software Development instead of shifting gears and worry about finding a way to their bills.

Prayers to everyone out there that our Hawaii Leaders have the foresight to make the right choices for our community and Mahalo to GameDev and ACI for fighting the good fight!

Aloha,

Mark
สร้างเกมง่ายๆ ด้วยมือของเรา — Unity
Tags: Unity, Game Design, Games, Game Development

Video game developer: job description

What does a video game developer do? Typical employers | Qualifications and training | Key skills Video game…
Conspiracy: Jumpstart #10: Dack
By: Bradley Rose
Tags: Magic, Nagademon, Game Design, Magic The Gathering, Conspiracyjumpstart

Conspiracy: Jumpstart began as a National Game Design Month project, where a game (or, in this case, a Magic: The Gathering product) is designed in one month, during November 2020. This is a continuation of what was left unfinished of that project.

Previous Devlog Updates:

Product Updates

Journey’s end. This is the last of the ten character packs. This makes it so that there are two character packs per color.

Close Call: A Silver-Bordered Card

I really wanted to have the Dack pack open a booster pack. Sort of as an homage to my favorite Conspiracy card, Lore Seeker. Though, opening booster packs is usually relegated to drafting rounds or silver-bordered cards.

I wondered if restricting to mentioning packs from specific expansions could make the spell black-bordered. I realized the physical logistics of opening packs without looking at them was a silver-bordered thing, though. Besides the fact that print runs of specific sets are not indefinite.

I got so far as designing a card in silver border and almost included it in this product. Ultimately, I decided against my desires for the sake of product consistency.

Here’s the card, though (this card is NOT in Dack’s character pack):

Basically, you do a mini one-round draft in the middle of a game. Anyway, to reiterate: the above card is NOT in the Dack character pack.

Dack

Dack’s mechanical theme is whenever you or your conspirators draw their second card this turn. This effect is naturally triggered whenever you or your conspirators gain sway of the city. And, of course, there are doses of looting, rummaging, and card draw in the pack.

In the story, “Drakeston” is the name of Dack’s hometown. But it’s written “Drakestown” on the existing Magic card Drakestown Forgotten. I decided to pay homage to the “Drakeston” spelling with the Drakeston Terror card below. No, the town isn’t named after a Drake, but I figured a Drake might be nestling, finding a home amidst the rubble of this ghost town. Y’know — to be cheeky.

Dack’s planeswalker card is quirky! Scroll down to below this pack’s card images to read more about the behind-the-scenes on the Dack planeswalker card.
Future of Animation and Game Design
By: Poorna Eswar
Tags: Animation, Game Design, Game Development, Animation Design, Future Technology

Future of Animation and Game Design

The popularity of video games is a staple of our culture and appears as though it’s going to stay.

From the different genres of video games to complex stories and character developments, video games have become an entity that spans generations of gamers.

For many, it is an escape into a new world of fantasy and adventure.

As a result, it is no wonder why so many high school and college graduates are going into the field of animation and game design.

Several colleges offer courses and programs related to learning how to create video games.

The video game industry is a growing, multi-billion dollar field and many college graduates want to get their hands on the controller.

The increasing demand for more games with better stories and more life-like graphics has been on the minds of serious gamers for years.

There is no satisfying the serious gamer because the graphics continue to get better every year and the stories tend to get more interesting, too.

Therefore, video game players expect more every time.

This is why colleges are now offering courses in animation and game design.

They see the prevalence of video games in our culture and the people who want to build and design these games. Continue reading….
Meta-Learning: A Self-Centered Analysis
By: Ian Speaker
Tags: Design Process, Manuals, Game Design, Design, Learning

In the Making

Perhaps one of the most interesting and rewarding parts about the project was seeing it unfold as I worked through it. Looking at my older sketches, the basic idea hadn’t changed much, but the way it was presented certainly did. Honestly, the idea about making it a manual didn’t come to me until very late in the process, and I’m incredibly glad it did. As dated as this’ll sound, I come from an era where pretty much all games came with an instruction manual of some sort, so given that the project is all about learning, I feel as though I reached the most natural conclusion imaginable, and balance has been restored.

Some early sketches of the general concept. There are still ancient inscriptions from back when this was supposed to actually be a game, but Ian from three weeks ago was an optimist, you see.

Another interesting factor to all this was the surveys I conducted to test the efficacy of this project for what it was trying to achieve. Everyone who participated seemed to have a good enough grasp of the mechanics, and they all felt I successfully demonstrated learning, so hearing that felt nice. However, again, to catch up the non-caption readers, not everything went exactly as hoped, as a certain question about a platform with a white outline seemed to yield responses different from what I anticipated. I was hoping they’d pick up on the fact that objects with white outlines were hazards, but it seems that wasn’t the case. It could be that I worded the question weirdly, or I wasn’t that clear to begin with.

However, it could also be the case that they’ve all fallen for my master plot, since part of the fun of game design is messing with player expectations. Although they were given limited information, I feel this “platform experiment” might prove valuable in understanding player thought processes, which I obviously must struggle with if that wasn’t made clear enough. That said, I should probably move on while I can. My lack of social comprehension is showing.

Learning From Learning (It Hasn’t Stopped Help)

Perhaps the most important experience I got from this was a complete run through of the design process. Sure, I got similar waves of prototyping and feedback in the past, but none were so close to the things I wanted to do in the future. This project helped me understand a bit more about deadlines, how projects can develop, and how players think. It was a lot of fun coming up with these ideas, and it’s great prep work for what’s to come later down the road.
Defining “The Game Design Debt”
Tags: Gamedev, Game Design, Game Development, Games, Gaming

While making my latest game called Neurodeck, I understood something.

My main reference for making the game was Slay The Spire, an ugly, addictive, crazy fun card game. It has been developed during at least 3 years, and received a lot of updates. This game has been a wild success because of its UI, UX, and excellent game design. People tried a game quite as good, but often failed. As of today, only Monster Train has been close to this result.

I understood that, even if Slay The Spire was ugly, it created a design base. A strong base of design principles, inspired by many other games, and created a new layer on top of that.

I was naive and felt that, building those two blocks would be super easy, because “they’re already invented”. The truth is, after 2 years of development, I have barely finished making those two blocks, and I’m not even close to the polish of the main reference.

This is the “Game Design Debt”: you need to build the core layer of foundations of the genre before being able to iterate on the genre.

Hades is another good example on this topic.

If you want to make an “Hades like”, you’ll need to build perfectly those 3 layers being able to even iterate on the genre. It will probably take a lot of budgets, people to even reach a level like Hades.

It has several implications, on many points.

The market level is higher, so market entrants (aka beginner developers) will have a harder time, so the market is more favorable to experienced developers. It will be harder for new developers to make a living with games.

Getting a quicker result was previously mitigated by having better tools, but Unity & Unreal have reached a threshold. The new versions give new tools, but they’re only a margin faster.

Some genres have weaker layers and can get done quicker (visual novels for instance).

Some layers demand for a different set of skills. Roguelikes demand for strong game design, while visual novels require excellent writing.

With that in mind, I feel like pre-production is more and more important. What quality base do you need to reach before being an iteration on the genre? What does this base require in terms of production and money?

Let me know by Twitter or in the comments what you think of this Design Debt.
Genshin Impact Review
By: Colin Mclearie
Tags: Review, Game Design, Genshin, Genshinimpact, Game Review

For my final game review of the semester, I decided to review the game that has been taking the most of my time throughout the last 2 and a half months that this game has been out, and that game is Genshin Impact. Ever since I got my first computer and got my first steam games, I immediately learned that I had a large love for open-world action RPG style games. This was learned from The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and ever since I’ve always hopped on big open world fantasy-based worlds just like it. I really couldn’t get enough of it, and Genshin Impact takes a lot of what I love about those types of games and expands it into areas that I never knew I’d be interested in.

What made this game so meaningful to me at first was the fact that it looked exactly like another awesome game that I loved to play, Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, only it was 100% free. It was a whole new world in the breath of the wild style. Not as big of course, but the game is only in the beginning of it’s development at the moment.

One of the biggest game mechanics that the game has is it’s magic, which is entirely elemental based. Each element has its own effects and elemental reactions to other elements. The game doesn’t just have a simple “water beats fire” kind of deal. Instead when water hits fire, or vise versa, it creates a reaction that cancels both effects and deals big damage.

The same happens with fire and ice, only with slight differences of course. These are only a couple of the elemental reactions though. There are tons of different combinations that you can test and try out to see what reactions you’d like the best!

The map is split into big regions, each one representing one of the seven elements. Right now the game only has the wind and earth regions, so it’s crazy to think about how much content the game already has when it’s only got 2 out of the 7 main areas of the game currently in it.

The only thing about the game that I don’t like is the fact that it’s actually a gacha game, so in order to get strong weapons and characters, you have to roll for them and hope you get lucky. I’m one of the people that has played nearly all of the game’s content and barely got any rare characters or weapons, but I’ve heard I’m on the unnaturally unlucky side of things because apparently it’s not as hard as it looks to get high rarities.

That being said, the game is 100% my favorite game of the year. I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s been taking up pretty much all of my time. I highly recommend this game to anyone who’s into games like Breath of the Wild or Skyrim. It’s a crazy fun time and I give it a 9.5/10.
Flashing and colorful text
By: Mini World Dev Captain
Tags: Sandbox Game, Game Design, Mwba, Game Development

Flashing and colorful text

This Article will show how to add the special symbols before the name and description in the plug-in setting to make the text flashing and coloful. Mini World Dev Captain ·Dec 11, 2020

The specific steps are as follows:

First open the plugin and find the props to be modified

Add special symbols in front of the text. For example, if you want the text to flash, add #b in front. Make the text red and add #R in front.

The specific symbol table is as follows:

If you want to design two different color in one description, you can put the symbol ‘#n’ at the end of each different color words.

Then you will get the below effect.
Reflection #3: Adventures in Zonbar
By: Kyle Ackerman
Tags: Rpgmaker, Game Design, Jrpg, Video Games

Adventures in Zonbar(Working title, especially since the project is still just saved as Project1) is a digitally made game on RPG Maker. It is about how four high school students tell an old homeless man to not ask them for money when he asks for some in a disrespectful way and afterwards, they are teleported to his homeland of Zonbar as he feels disrespected when he is called an old fart. Chad, our main character has to find his friends and beat the old man, Zanthar the Unrelenting, and go home. I was not able to find anyone to test it, but I did show it to some people. They seemed to really like the premise of the game and the story when I showed off what I had made. As I showed it to my friends that are in to turn-based JRPGs, so they understood the rules and needed no explanation once they saw a battle happen. There’s one major bug that I don’t really know how to fix, so that happened and I had to restart the game in mid presentation, which was unexpected for me. They enjoyed seeing what I have presented them and hoped that I would make more. What stood out to them was the funny dialogue since most JRPGs don’t go for more comedic stuff with most of the text. Anything that I would change is that bug and to go back and change how certain attacks are and how much hp they do cause I think it’s very skewed towards the player because of RPG Maker, so I would have to fix that. Also expand on the world. Overall I really enjoyed making a game on RPG Maker and can’t wait to continue this game or make a new, hopefully fully fleshed out, game.
What is my Game Design philosophy?
Tags: Playability, Game Design, Game Art, Game Development, Gameplay

Recently a very nice recruiter asked me what is my Game Design philosophy. On the occasion, I replied about cooperation and cycle project — what I truly believe — but I thought it wasn’t a reply 100% aligned with what is my true Game Design philosophy.

I keep thinking about it ceaselessly. He opened a giant hole in my mind. What is my Game Design philosophy? Lots of projects, books, courses, talks and thoughts for nothing?

In this chaos, I remembered what makes me love videogames. The reason isn`t awesome graphics, ultra high tech features, or nice social shares. What makes me love videogames is a good experience with the interaction between me and the core of the game. In other words, good playability can generate an awesome gameplay experience.

This is the feeling that makes me feel alive when I play a very good game.

So now I finally figure out. The answer was always with me. The answer made me chose my career, my graduation, master, and Ph.D. researches and it is still the motif keep studying.

Finally, I can say: my game design philosophy is a gameplay first! Simple and clear. But still a little bit difficult for game designers, artists, developers, and producers to understand.

Think with me. What makes a game be a game? Is it its story? A good pixel art? A nice sound design? No! What makes a game be a game is it is being playable. That is the most important thing.

If wasn`t we will be forgotten games like Tetris, Pac Man, or even Pong. These games survived for generations, not because of their graphics, music, or whatever. These games are still alive — and will be for a long time — because they still can provide excellent gameplay experiences.

Of course, we want more than this. We want to see what the technology innovations this new generation of consoles will come to us — Rockstar please my GTA 6! But all these incredible things will not survive in our memory without an excellent gameplay experience.

Text written by Lisa Poubel, game designer + Ph.D. student
Game Dev in Progress… Day 35
By: Cristian Aspacio
Tags: Unity, Game Design, Coding, Game Development, Intern

Photo by Headway on Unsplash

It is Day 35 and the story continues through the second week of working on the game project. Today, I was able to finish the wave system and have them set up to instantiate the enemies that we needed. Chris who worked on it made it really easy to modify and create the waves that we needed to reach MVP. We this, I will demo it tomorrow and do some testing to see if it works with everybody else’s code. Here is a short demo of what I was able to accomplish:

I have it randomly spawn a generic enemies but we will have more enemies as the other team members get finished with them. The spawning system spawns one randomized enemy from a list. I have a spawn point that is randomized to go up and down but we can also create more spawn points to have more control. The script that was created for the spawn manager is very modular and which will help the developers create there own unique waves. I have it set up to be randomized right now but the script can be modified to have more control over the waves. I also have it set up to spawn the mid boss and the final boss during specific waves.

One problem I had was that when I was spawning the Final Boss, it was in the wrong rotation. I am going to let Dylan fix it because I didn’t mess with his code. I also had the same problem for my implementation of mid boss but I solved it by hard coding the rotation I wanted when it instantiates. Another problem I was able to figure out was that the abstract class had an null pointer error. This is because with did not assign the components to the variable handlers we had setup. Abstract classes are really powerful and also really hard to use. We had modify it a bit more to add more functionalities that we forgot to add at the beginning.

Finishing up, I was lucky that Chris was able to make this script easy to understand and easy to modify. I didn’t want to add to much into it because of the time limit we had to finish. So right now I think we have a good system going that can be used by everybody. Now that is done, I await my next task for tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

_

Cristian Aspacio
Day 13 Beam me up Scotty!
By: Mark Bohuslav
Tags: Unity, Game Design, C Sharp Programming, Game Development

To complete the PowerUp Collect I used Vector3.movetowards. I also programmed the Shielded variants of the Enemy to charge towards the player and follow him when they get within a certain range using Vector3.movetowards as well.

After lunch then it was all about learning ray tracing. I read Dan’s medium article again, read some articles online and setup a test object and played around before trying to implement it in my more complicated coding environment. Dan’s advice on debugging each line really is very important. One thing I learned is that when implementing code you find from the internet into your program you will probably break things even if you think you know what you are doing. There are so many variables involved and each program is so unique, we can’t think of everything that could go wrong or needs to be changed. Learning to debug coupled with play testing will really take you far and save you time as you get better.

Using Ray Tracing, now my enemies will shoot at powerups when they are in their frontal field of view. Additionally one of the enemy variants will now shoot at the player when the player is behind them. I won’t go deep into ray tracing since I just scratched the surface of its potential but I do want to share one challenge I had that drove me nuts at the beginning. When I first started experimenting with Ray tracing I couldn’t figure out how to stop the ray trace from detecting the Origin collider instead of my intended target. I know there is probably coding to get around this problem like have the ray start with an offset and while researching this I found out about a feature that can be changed in the Project settings called “Queries start in Colliders” that fixes this issue. I don’t know why I would want my ray tracing to work inside my own collider, especially for this current project so I simply Deactivated it and now the Ray tracing works flawlessly. See below image :

Overall a very good day with lots of new concepts learned. As mentioned earlier, tomorrow I will be programming Enemies to avoid shots and get the Boss in the game and implementing another player weapon. Afterwards, I will do some more visual and audio improvements and then its post processing followed by code clean-up!

Mahalo!
Day 12– Phase 2 Halfway there!
By: Mark Bohuslav
Tags: Unity, Game Design, C Sharp Programming, Game Development

Today was very productive. I was able to complete a new Elite Enemy that spawns on certain waves. It has 5 hit points and moves side to side while shooting down a long beam over and over again. When the unit goes to 4/5 hit points he will start flashing red until he dies

In addition to that I added a random small asteroid spawn that shoots down the screen periodically. It rotates while moving diagonally. I just added the asteroid for ambiance. The tricky part for the asteroid was that when I tried to rotate it while moving the front of the unit would move with the rotation so it would start doing circles instead of moving down and rotating. I came up with two solutions: either animate the rotation or create a child object inside the parent asteroid and put the sprite on the child and have it rotate while scripting the parent to just move in the direction I wanted which in this case was a random diagonal direction. I chose this latter solution and it worked out well.

I also enabled shields on some enemies. Over the weekend I spent some time doing a visual overhaul of my game. finding animations, lasers, ships, etc. I went for green theme on the player and warmer colors on the enemies. I picked out the BOSS Mothership which I will showcase later this week once it is fully programmed. I changed my UI colors to match my theme. I also redesigned the player ship to make it look more badass. See below for a quick visual. I used paint and Gimp to add engines/canons on the side and change the ship colors.

I also completed the Balanced Spawning for Powerups. I basically approached it in 2 stages. The first stage was to use a switch statement tied to the Enemy Wave number to determine how quickly the powerups would spawn. the next stage was to assign a percentage chance with if statements to determine what pickup you would get and randomize the numbers. I actually ended up with 0–130 but it doesn’t matter as we can just add to the random range we add more powerups.

Overall I got a lot done and have 14 out the 20 points done for Phase 2. I will probably go for all 28 points, although I might skip the backward laser as I have so much going in the screen right now its getting hard to kill my creations. That being said I did move the Main camera back to 12 instead of the 10 we started with, this gave more room to maneuver and accommodate more baddies. I also freed up the player movement to go all the way to the top so there is more maneuverability.

Overall I am very happy with the visuals and how the game plays…..its hard….lol! Next step is to learn Ray Casting. I read Dan’s medium article about it and watched a Youtube video from Jonathan talking about it for 3D and I want to experiment with it tomorrow.

Mahalo!
Горький опыт вдохновения. Часть I.
By: Nikita Goncharuk
Tags: Review, Game Design, Game Development, Storytelling, Games

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Conspiracy: Jumpstart #09: Kaya
By: Bradley Rose
Tags: Magic, Nagademon, Game Design, Magic The Gathering, Conspiracyjumpstart

Conspiracy: Jumpstart began as a National Game Design Month project, where a game (or, in this case, a Magic: The Gathering product) is designed in one month, during November 2020. This is a continuation of what was left unfinished of that project.

Previous Devlog Updates:

Product Updates

Now that we’ve exited National Game Design Month, sweeping revisions across the product can occur. But, first, let’s finish the character packs. With that said…

Game Terminology: Conspirators

After receiving feedback on how convoluted it is to refer to the players that aren’t your opponents, I decided to pursue using a term to refer to these players. Remember, they’re not your teammates, as they won’t win when you win. “Ally” is a strong word, but Magic already uses Ally as a creature type.

Because non-opponents are rare to find in other Magic formats (other players are either your opponents or your teammates, in most cases), I decided it’s OK to not worry about coming up with a term that makes sense outside of Conspiracy: Jumpstart.

So, I picked “your conspirator.” This is a player that’s not an opponent. Trying it on. I feel so-so on it. What do you think? Do you like another term?

Kaya

Kaya’s mechanical theme is “your opponents’ permanents destroyed or exiled.” Every pack has artifacts and enchantments. And there’s plenty of creature destruction (or exiling) to be had.

Kaya differs from Daretti in regards to artifact cards in that only destroyed artifacts will help both planeswalkers’ respective themes. An artifact card that’s discarded helps Daretti, and non-artifacts help Kaya.

Kaya’s unique among Conspiracy characters in that she’s not from Fiora. But she played an important role in the events of plane, helping the transition from King Brago to Queen Marchesa.
Tourney — das Potenzial von Gamification bei Distance Learning
By: Darjan Hil
Tags: Distance Teaching, Game Design, Remote Learning, Gamification, Distance Learning

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4 New Colors of Custom Printed D6 Dice Available at The Game Crafter
By: Tavis Parker
Tags: Game Design, D6, Game Designer, Dice, Board Game Design

4 new colors of custom printed D6 dice at The Game Crafter

We just added 4 additional colors to our custom printed D6s, bringing the total color selection to 9 colors. This gives you a much wider gamut of colors to match player colors, game colors, or action types with your custom dice. See them at https://www.thegamecrafter.com/parts?query=d6%2C%2016mm%2C%20blank&hitsPerPage=8

#dice #d6 #customdice #gamedesign #gamedesigner #boardgamedesign #gamepieces

With these additional dice, we now offer 9 colors of custom printable dice.

Get started making your own custom board game today at https://www.thegamecrafter.com/start