I am Blakeyrat, ask me anything. (no longer answering questions)
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Yeah, and the bits he threw away about his rat character would be make a great videogame NPC. It's a demon rat drooling something radioactive, that stole the voice of someone and rants about people doing dumb things.
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It.
Is not.
Real.
The hell you say!
It says it right there in his user card, and we all know everything he says is true.
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No, I didn't get very far on it. Why not? I dunno, I'm a lazy asshole I guess. My general game development arc goes like this:
- I'm really excited, I wanna make a game!
- Ok, I made something that kind of works, but goddamned are these placeholder graphics and sounds terrible
- I've spent the last 3 weeks working on these graphics and they're still terrible
- I'll just do something else
My brain seems to lack the ability to tolerate placeholder assets long enough to get the game complete-enough to shop-out and find graphics people. And I have absolutely zero artistic talent.
Is having original assets a hard requirement? There are lots of places where you can get decent assets for free or relatively cheap, like Turbosquid, DAZ3D, Mixamo Fuse, etc. It's very difficult to justify funding a meat processor asset generator until you have AAA revenue (or an investor).
And honestly, there are so many other challenges you'll encounter while making a game* that you won't be aware of until you're knee-deep in development that it's best to let someone else with expertise solve the relatively easy problems while you focus on the special sauce that glues it all together.
*Say you're making a village in an RPG. Who are the NPCs in it? What is an NPC? What do they wear? What is clothing? What do they look like? What are their stats? What is a stat? What is their dialogue, and under which conditions do they say things? Can they offer quests? What is a quest?
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I actually liked the entity model
and everything-is-composition as opposed to inheritance and OOP. also while working with it I enjoyed it because it was a game after all.
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I actually liked the entity model
and everything-is-composition as opposed to inheritance and OOP. also while working with it I enjoyed it because it was a game after all.I think Unity is an excellent tool for getting a simple game out the door really quickly. For large projects, I'd pick something else, though.
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I would take your word over mine on this. My experience was very limited. But I see many games on Steam have the Unity3D logo, even those that blakey uploads his review for.
What I loved about my limited experience is that, it was C# and, through some marshaling, some C but I could run my VR game in 1 week on PC, Android and iPhone! A game that has physics engine, I could buy my 3D models from their market, developing the game itself was a game for me.
Now have to look and see how many games are developed by Unity versus something else.
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What thing do you like most about Discourse?
How it handles image uploads, and supports uploading non-image files.
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Did you copy-paste the occurrences of that word with keyboard shortcuts while composing that post?
No.
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Of all the copycat AMA threads, which one is the best?
They all suck, and I'm annoyed that my original thread is now in the same category as them.
Are you glad you started this avalanche?
I can't control what other people post.
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Is having original assets a hard requirement?
For me? Yes.
I might consider clip-art assets for ground clutter in a 3D game (hell, even the guys at Bethesda shipped the identical "burned book" model in every Gamebryo game from Morrowind to Skyrim), but I'd feel bad about myself if the game I shipped didn't have at least 90% original assets.
*Say you're making a village in an RPG. Who are the NPCs in it? What is an NPC? What do they wear? What is clothing? What do they look like? What are their stats? What is a stat? What is their dialogue, and under which conditions do they say things? Can they offer quests? What is a quest?
I don't read shit typed in this microscopic font size, so I'm not answering any of this.
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I'd feel bad about myself if the game I shipped didn't have at least 90% original assets.
You can start making your game with cheap or non-original assets then gradually add original assets and substitute the cheap ones. You can set up the game logic and story. Plus, a 2D game (like the one you reviewed recently) dos not need many assets, 3D games I guess are more involved.
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For me? Yes.
I might consider clip-art assets for ground clutter in a 3D game (hell, even the guys at Bethesda shipped the identical "burned book" model in every Gamebryo game from Morrowind to Skyrim), but I'd feel bad about myself if the game I shipped didn't have at least 90% original assets.
That's an admirably high standard, but it's not one you're going to achieve without lots of help.
I don't read shit typed in this microscopic font size, so I'm not answering any of this.
All of those questions are rhetorical, so individual responses are not required. I just wanted to illustrate how there are a ton of problems a game developer has to solve for anything more complex than a platformer without even beginning to think about asset creation. Hell, I'm five years into my current project and only starting to think about going alpha.
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You can start making your game with cheap or non-original assets then gradually add original assets and substitute the cheap ones. You can set up the game logic and story. Plus, a 2D game (like the one you reviewed recently) dos not need many assets, 3D games I guess are more involved.
^This. The tricky part is that to some extent, your assets can become coupled to your code. For example, I have a body twisting animation that gets mixed in when the player character is strafing left or right, and another bend animation that goes up and down based on mouselook. The animation controller code depends on these animations having specific names. If you can extract animations from a character's rig and share them, it makes things a bit simpler, though.
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Yeah like ages ago when Shmork posted it.
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Have you played destiny again since that one thread ages ago?
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This post is deleted!
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Have you played destiny again since that one thread ages ago?
I have too many good games to waste time playing that mediocre one.
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If you could take any game that is estimated to be released somewhere in the next 5 years and get it now, what would it be.
I know that it's somewhat of a silly question because announcements aren't (usually) made that far ahead.
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If you could take any game that is estimated to be released somewhere in the next 5 years and get it now, what would it be.
Elder Scrolls VI.
... seriously, you even had to ask?
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What. I haven't played Skyrim yet.
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Go away, you're fired, you are the weakest link, goodbye.
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You are neither Anne nor Donald Trump.
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I'd be better than George.
And Donald Trump.
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What are your top 5 video games of all time?
What are your bottom 5 video games of all time?
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There is a lot of info about you here:
Sorry for the PII
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What are your top 5 video games of all time?
I don't keep a running ranked list of all the video games I've ever played. I've already posted a list of video games and types of video games I like in this thread, scroll up and read that.
One thing I'll add to that list, is I like story-based non-(or infrequent-)combat exploration games, like Amnesia, Gone Home, Dear Esther, Soma, etc. Also I was a big fan of The Longest Journey when it first came out, but I was never able to get into the sequel and I've never bought the episodic continuation.
What are your bottom 5 video games of all time?
...
I don't keep a running ranked list of all the video games I've ever played. Who does? Why do people assume other people do? ... do you?
Whatever, click here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLIy-EOkH0ZnXeCiLKZfYKF5Ns7tG_J5B
It's not even an easy question. Does "New kind of adventure" even count as a "video game"? It lacks several things I'd say video games require like, say, "any sort of progression."
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do you?
I don't keep a list, but I thought it would be fun to think of the games you've enjoyed the most.
Here are my top 5:
- Guild Wars
- Wipeout 2097
- G Police
- Freespace 2
- Resistance fall of man
Here are my bottom 5 (this took me a lot longer to think of):
- Sonic (2006)
- Need for speed prostreet
- Resistance fall of man 2
- Gran theft auto 2
- F1 Championship Edition
Admittedly, it's less fun to think of the crap games you've wasted money on.
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Do you prefer Battletoads (NES) or Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (SNES)?
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I don't keep a running ranked list of all the video games I've ever played. Who does? Why do people assume other people do? ... do you?
Didn't you like post the winning screen from Wizardry, from your archive of all the games you've won?
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Do you prefer Battletoads (NES)
Not played until like a couple weeks ago when I got Rare Replay. And I think it has the Genesis version?
or Battletoads in Battlemaniacs (SNES)?
Not played it, that I'm aware of.
Didn't you like post the winning screen from Wizardry, from your archive of all the games you've won?
I only keep that from Wizardry 8, which is an extremely obtuse like 160+ hour-long game, and Mission: Thunderbolt, which is similarly challenging.
Basically, there's only a few games worth being proud of beating. I think Wizardry 8 is one of those.
I don't keep an "archive of all the games I've won". That's ridiculous.
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I don't keep an "archive of all the games I've won". That's ridiculous.
If you did, I like to imagine that you keep it as a spreadsheet in LibreOffice.
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Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is largely a remake of the NES game but shorter and more focused, with far better graphics.
It isn't as hard, (because it's shorter, and on a better system) but I always enjoyed it. The best thing about it, though, is that level 3 requires either a willingness to do the same thing 10k times or savestates/infinite lives and a willingness to do the same thing 500 times.
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If you did, I like to imagine that you keep it as a spreadsheet in LibreOffice in .ods format, and checked in git, as open source achievements list.
FTFO
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If you did, I like to imagine that you keep it as a spreadsheet in
LibreOfficeLotus 1-2-3..FTFY
But back on topic: @blakeyrat, I was always wondering what specific platform you used, especially after Classic Mac. Was it hard to convert to a Windows stack at first?
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Forget that! edlin is all we'll ever need!
http://orgmode.org/manual/The-spreadsheet.html ?
This one I really miss in Vim.
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But back on topic: @blakeyrat, I was always wondering what specific platform you used, especially after Classic Mac.
Until recently, I haven't used a "specific platform", I've almost always used two OSes simultaneously. Something like this:
C-64
C-64 & Macintosh
Macintosh & DOS
Macintosh
Macintosh & Windows 98
Macintosh & Windows 98 & RedHat 6.x
Macintosh & Windows 98 & BeOS
Macintosh & Windows 2000
Macintosh & Windows XP
Windows XP & Macintosh
Windows Vista & Macintosh
Windows 7
Windows 8
Windows 10Was it hard to convert to a Windows stack at first?
Not really because there was no "conversion". By the time I started using Windows as my primary OS, I'd already been using Windows for like a decade both at home and work.
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Until recently, I haven't used a "specific platform", I've almost always used two OSes simultaneously.
Why was that? Didn't you find it tedious, to sync between two OSes?
I'm currently forced into using two simultaneously and sometimes it's a real pain.
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- Have you ever tried to work for Microsoft?
- You are in Seattle and big MS fan, that should be an ideal job, correct?
Feel free to ignore, if it is PII
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Why was that?
Because video games.
Didn't you find it tedious, to sync between two OSes?
I never synced between the two OSes, so no.
EDIT: for syncing between my desktop and laptop, a copy of XMarks (back in the days I used Firefox) and DropBox was fine for that. I actually used the Microsoft Filesync or whatever, back before it turned into a "cloud" product and worked cross-platform. Pissed me off when the Windows Live team shat all over that great product.
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Have you ever tried to work for Microsoft?
Not only have I tried, but I've succeed in working for Microsoft twice. Once indirectly contracting with a V- badge, once when Microsoft bought a company I worked for and I became a FTE. I think it's safe to say virtually anybody in the Seattle IE scene has worked for Microsoft at least once, even if by accident (due to acquisitions).
You are in Seattle and big MS fan, that should be an ideal job, correct?
Each group in MS is so different that it's impossible to really answer this. Some groups are great, flexible, casual, some are more inflexible, less casual. Everybody at MS has really good bennies, though.
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When you rant here, you're angry or you do it for fun?
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Do you remember the paid mods kerfuffle with Skyrim? Do you think that could of worked with a different game if they didn't fuck over the modders?
Just popped into my head when I just finished Hotline Miami again. I would pay for more good levels for that game.
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Do you like the weather in Seattle?
It's one of the reasons I've considered moving there.
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Do you remember the paid mods kerfuffle with Skyrim?
Yes.
Do you think that could of worked with a different game if they didn't fuck over the modders?
I think the only chance it had to work relied on paid mods existing from release of the game. It certainly doesn't work for a game that already had 10,000 mods, 9,000 of them had dependencies on other mods. That said, even if they had started it on a game that had zero mods, it still might have failed.
Personally, I think the implementation was shit-- you could charge for your mod, or you could make it free, but you couldn't make the mod free and also take donations. Whaaa? But Valve screws up the implementation of every feature, so no huge shock there.
If you wanted to make the feature work, you need something like the following:
- The ability for mod makers to take donations instead of requiring them to do purchases or nothing
- Signing of mods, to reduce the occurrence of mods being ripped-off
- Some form of revenue sharing for mods that rely on other mods, otherwise the people who make "foundational" mods (like the guy who made the custom animation mod for Skyrim) get royally fucked
- A game engine that is significantly more reliable with mods, and where it's easier to install and debug mods
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Not only have I tried, but I've succeed in working for Microsoft twice.
Any hvac over your head there?
Splinter (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) - Wikipedia
