Math for Game Developers Video Series I've launched a new Youtube series, Math for Game Developers. Each week I'll be showing how to solve a new problem in game development using math, and I'll be building up a math toolkit that you can use to solve any game dev problem. 1. Moving a character with vectors: 2. 3. 4. 5. This is very basic stuff, just showing the basics of vector maths, buteventually I'll be progressing to explaining the math behind moreadvanced things. I hope to help out people who are just starting their game dev career soplease let me know if I can improve the videos (other than the lowquality audio, a problem I'm working on) or if you didn't understandsomething
Game UI By Example: A Crash Course in the Good and the Bad How easy is it for your player to put their intention into action, or to understand what's going on in your game? In this tutorial, you'll learn how to build a better game UI by examining both good and bad examples from existing games, and end up with a checklist of questions to guide you through designing them. As gamers and game developers we know that immersion is everything. When you're immersed you lose track of time and become involved in what the game is presenting. A composited screenshot from Honey Bee Match 3. In this article I won't be teaching you how to put a UI together. The terms UI and UX are sometimes (incorrectly) used interchangeably, but they have specific meanings. UI, or User Interface, refers to the methods (keyboard control, mouse control) and interfaces (inventory screen, map screen) through which a user interacts with your game. A good UI tells you what you need to know, and then gets out of the way. Does this interface tell me what I need to know right now?
Bartle’s Taxonomy of Player Types (And Why It Doesn’t Apply to Everything) Richard Bartle co-created MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), the text-based precursor to today's MMORPGs, while studying at Essex University. He ended up formulating the theory that all MUD players could be broken down into four main types: killers, achievers, explorers, and socializers. This theory has since been used in all sorts of game design situations where it doesn't apply - let's look at what exactly it does tell us. MUD is a text-based adventure game (no graphics at all, only text) that had the then-unique attribute of being able to be played alongside other human players. It was one of the first online persistent worlds created, and you can still grab a MUD client today, connect to a server and play. It's a simplified version of pen and paper role-playing games in that the player has to imagine the world according to the information the Game Master (the server and the writer of the game, in this case) provides. Summary of Bartle's player types. Bartle calls it a bandwagon.
Make Games Dirty Coding Tricks [When the schedule is shot and a game needs to ship, programmers may employ some dirty coding tricks to get the game out the door. In an article originally published in Gamasutra sister publication Game Developer magazine earlier this year, here are nine real-life examples of just that.] Programmers are often methodical and precise beasts who do their utmost to keep their code clean and pretty. In a case like this, a frazzled and overworked programmer is far more likely to ignore best practices, and hack in a less desirable solution to get the game out the door. - Brandon Sheffield [If any readers have any dirty coding tricks of their own to share, please email them to Brandon Sheffield at bsheffield@gdmag.com. Around four years ago I was working as a programmer on a multiplatform PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube release. To narrow down the issue we continuously rendered a border around the edge of the screen with a different color for different sections of the code. - Mark Cooke
Evolve Your Hierarchy Refactoring Game Entities with Components Up until fairly recent years, game programmers have consistently used a deep class hierarchy to represent game entities. The tide is beginning to shift from this use of deep hierarchies to a variety of methods that compose a game entity object as an aggregation of components. This article explains what this means, and explores some of the benefits and practical considerations of such an approach. Different games have different requirements as to what is needed in a game entity, but in most games the concept of a game entity is quite similar. Some example entities: MissileCarTankGrenadeGunHeroPedestrianAlienJetpackMed-kitRock Entities can usually do various things. Run a scriptMoveReact as a rigid bodyEmit ParticlesPlay located audioBe packed up by the playerBe worn by the playerExplodeReact to magnetsBe targeted by the playerFollow a pathAnimate As development progresses, we usually need to add various points of functionality to the entities.
How to Create a Custom 2D Physics Engine: The Basics and Impulse Resolution There are many reasons you might want to create a custom physics engine: first, learning and honing your skills in mathematics, physics and programming are great reasons to attempt such a project; second, a custom physics engine can tackle any sort of technical effect the creator has the skill to create. In this article I would like to provide a solid introduction on how to create a custom physics engine entirely from scratch. Physics provides a wonderful means for allowing a player to immerse themselves within a game. By the end of this tutorial the following topics will have been covered, in two dimensions: Simple collision detectionSimple manifold generationImpulse resolution Here's a quick demo: Note: Although this tutorial is written using C++, you should be able to use the same techniques and concepts in almost any game development environment. This article involves a fair amount of mathematics and geometry, and to a much lesser extent actual coding. Collision normalPenetration depth
The Big List Of Game Making Tools Reverse Design: Chrono Trigger - 1 <map name="admap64899" id="admap64899"><area href=" shape="rect" coords="0,0,728,90" title="" alt="" target="_blank" /></map><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:728px;border-style:none;background-color:#ffffff;"><tr><td><img src=" style="width:728px;height:90px;border-style:none;" usemap="#admap64899" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td style="background-color:#ffffff;" colspan="1"><center><a style="font-size:10px;color:#0000ff;text-decoration:none;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;font-family:Tahoma, verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-transform: none;letter-spacing:normal;text-shadow:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:normal;" href=" Hello, readers! Also, this isn't our first Reverse Design. At the heart of Chrono Trigger is the question of whether or not events are inevitable.
Reverse Design: Final Fantasy 6 - 1 <map name="admap66332" id="admap66332"><area href=" shape="rect" coords="0,0,728,90" title="" alt="" target="_blank" /></map><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:728px;border-style:none;background-color:#ffffff;"><tr><td><img src=" style="width:728px;height:90px;border-style:none;" usemap="#admap66332" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td style="background-color:#ffffff;" colspan="1"><center><a style="font-size:10px;color:#0000ff;text-decoration:none;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;font-family:Tahoma, verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-transform: none;letter-spacing:normal;text-shadow:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:normal;" href=" target="_blank">Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad here, right now: $0</a></center></td></tr></table> (1) The diminution of character classes
50 Tips for Working with Unity (Best Practices) » devmag.org.za About these tips (Edit: August 2016. I have revised these tips. You can find the new list here.) These tips are not all applicable to every project. They are based on my experience with projects with small teams from 3 to 20 people.There’s is a price for structure, re-usability, clarity, and so on — team size and project size determine whether that price should be paid.Many tips are a matter of taste (there may be rivalling but equally good techniques for any tip listed here).Some tips may fly in the face of conventional Unity development. Process 1. 2. 3. 4. It makes it unnecessary to re-setup each scene.It makes loading much faster (if most objects are shared between scenes).It makes it easier to merge scenes (even with Unity’s new text-based scenes there is so much data in there that merging is often impractical in any case).It makes it easier to keep track of data across levels. You can still use Unity as a level editor (although you need not). 5. Scene Organisation 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Art
LibGDX desarrollo de videojuegos multiplataforma en Java Os traigo otro framework para desarrollo de videojuegos que está pegando fuerte últimamente, el hecho de que sea multiplataforma utilizando java ayuda muchos a ello, funciona incluso en IOS, lo mejor de todo es que es totalmente libre y gratuita, hablamos de LibGDX. libGDX es un framework para el desarrollo de videojuegos escrito en Java con sus partes más críticas implementadas en C/C++. Corre sobre OpenGL ES 1.0 y 2.0 para dispositivos actuales. Plataformas soportadas Las plataformas soportadas son las siguientes: WindowsLinuxMac OS XAndroid (1.5+)iOSJavascript/WebGL (GWT) Aunque cabe decir que como inconveniente la versión de IOS necesita monotouch que su licencia no es gratuita y tampoco precisamente barata. Característas Las principales características son: Una opción muy a tener en cuenta si estás pensando en desarrollar un videojuego multiplataforma ya que a la facilidad de java se le une una gran cantidad de herramientas creada por la comunidad para elaborar proyectos rápidamente.
2D Game Art for Programmers