The Indies' Guide to Game Making | Features This article originally appeared in issue 246 of PC Gamer UK. You might have heard that “It's never been easier to make a game.” And it's true. But how do you actually make one? I don't know, but I do know a lot of indie games. I'll also cover how much these tools cost, what your rights are when it comes to selling your work, and what platforms they can make games for. Contents The built-in sprite editor isn't bad. What is it? Price and licence: The limited version is free, basic version is £30, a version for teams is £60. Makes games for: PC and Mac. iOS and Android versions are £120 extra each, HTML5 is £60. Link: Tutorial:TIG forums tutorials Consistent rules are simpler to code. Case Study: Spelunky Developer: Derek Yu Get it:for free How long does Game Maker take to learn? It shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks to get the hang of Game Maker. What prior knowledge or skills are helpful? What can't you do with it? How long did Spelunky take to make?
Design a Video Game Interface Window in Photoshop One of the most important aspects of playing a video game is how information is presented. How the graphics are presented makes a major difference in how the players will perceive the game during play. In today’s tutorial we will demonstrate how to design a video game interface window. During the process we will show how to manually draw certain aspects, apply layer styles, textures, and even how to incorporate Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started! Tutorial Assets The following assets were used during the production of this tutorial. Step 1: Background Create new file with size 1152 px x 864 px. Step 2 Add a paper textures again, this time change its blend mode with Multiply. Step 3 Add adjustment layer Hue/Saturation to darken it. Step 4 Add a vintage book textures with blend mode Multiply and Opacity 48%. Step 5 Add old paper textures. Step 6 Add adjustment layer Black & White. Step 7 Create new layer. Step 8 Set its blend mode to Multiply and reduce its opacity to 8%. Step 9 Create new layer.
A Layman’s Guide to Projection in Videogames « Significant Bits Oftentimes when a videogame has a skewed, overhead point of view, we call it isometric. That’s rarely the accurate term, though, and it’s not just pointless semantics. Although Echochrome uses a single projection type, its gameplay is based on constantly rotating and morphing its 3D structures. With each new view, the physical architecture of the level changes to reflect what the player sees on the screen. Projection basically means taking a three dimensional object and displaying it on a 2D plane (i.e., a screen). So what exactly are these projection types? 1). Orthographic projection relies on a lack of perspective and a consistent relationship between its axes. The side, top-down, and bird’s eye Orthographic views, with some faking. Top-down views tend to look a little awkward rendering pyramid-shaped structures. A side-view Orthographic projection is often simulated in platforming games, showing a scene as viewed through the player’s eyes. 2). 3).
Game Development Tutorials – Networking for Game Programmers UDP vs. TCP What is the best way to send data between machines? Do you use TCP sockets, UDP sockets or a mixture of both? Sending and Receiving Packets This article shows how to send and receive UDP packets using BSD sockets, giving you source code that works across MacOS X, Windows and Unix. Virtual Connection over UDP Learn how to create your own virtual connection between two machines on top of UDP. Reliability and Flow Control Learn how to implement your own reliability system on top of UDP using sequence numbers and acks. Debugging Multiplayer Games Explains the techniques used by professional game developers to debug multiplayer games. What Every Programmer Needs To Know About Game Networking A brief overview of the history of PC multiplayer games. Floating Point Determinism Is it possible to get exactly the same floating point result (down to the bit-level) each time a program is run?
Humus VideoTutorials Search public documentation: VideoTutorials 日本語訳中国翻译한국어 Interested in the Unreal Engine? Visit the Unreal Technology site. Looking for jobs and company info? Questions about support via UDN? UE3 Home > Unreal Engine 3 Video Tutorials Often there's no better way to learn a tool than to watch it being used. Accessing the Videos Each of the links below points to a tutorial, grouped by topic or specific feature. The video tutorials are linked to a media repository from this page. NOTE: These video tutorials were made using the Unreal Development Kit. Please right-click and save each file to your local storage space. Engine Tutorials The file format is Windows Media Video (.wmv). Skeletal Mesh Pipeline - Using UDK Jeremy Ernst, Technical Animator at Epic Games, takes you through the Unreal Engine Skeletal Mesh pipeline. Each compressed archive contains one video: Video Training Modules Often there's no better way to learn a tool than to watch it being used. Accessing the Videos Training Topics Eat3D
A Dictionary of Video Game Theory Preface This dictionary of video game theory is a companion to my book, Half-Real. With the dictionary, I hope to provide a resource for students, researchers, teachers, and game players looking for terminological clarifications and pointers to further reading. A list of works cited can be found at the bottom of the page. The dictionary is not intended to be encyclopedic, but takes its starting point from the issues discussed in the book. The sign indicates an issue that is elaborated in Half-Real. If there is any term that you would like to see listed in the dictionary, please send me a mail with your request . Jesper Juul, Copenhagen, November 2005. Abstract game An abstract game has rules, but no fictional world. Half-Real, chapter 4. Aesthetic index "The aesthetic index of a puzzle, as it may be called, seems to be inversely proportional to the complexity of its solution or to the obviousness of the pattern, trap, or trick it hides." Half-Real, chapter 3. Aesthetic goal Half-Real, chapter 2.
Creating a Game with Bonjour – Game Logic In the previous articles, we predominantly focused on the network aspect of the game. In this final installment, it is time to zoom in on the game itself. We will implement the game and leverage the foundation we laid in the previous articles to create a multiplayer game. Introduction In this article, we will discuss two topics, (1) creating the game and (2) leveraging the foundation that we created in the previous articles. 1. Let me start this article by briefly talking about the game, Four in a Row. This implies that we need to keep track of quite a few variables. I am not an expert in game development and the approach we use in this project is not the only solution to implement Four in a Row. While exploring Four in a Row, I stumbled upon a Stack Overflow answer that outlines an algorithm for Four in a Row using bitboards. As I said, we will be using an array of arrays as the data structure of the game. Step 1: Adding the Board View Let's start by creating the board view. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Dev diary number seventeen : Bitwise Tilemapping ‹ Sauropod Studio Woah. Friday already? Seems like I was writing last week’s blog yesterday. Geez, time really has a way of sneaking up on you. We spent this week very focused, touching up several bugs mostly, and working on the trailer. Here’s a list of what we did this week: Completed the implementation of ladders in the game. I was in an interesting conversation last Wednesday with a friend of mine while attending the Mount-Royal Game Society monthly meetup. In a 2d game engine, it is exceedingly easy to create terrain transition because you can overlay textures with opacity maps, and generally do not have to worry about taking into account all the neighbour tile possibility tree. However, in a 3d game engine, unless you have access to custom shaders, it becomes a real challenge to limit the number of possibilities to a reasonable amount. The current method we use comes with a rather large number of limitations, but happens to be very lightweight and extremely simple. That’s a lot of possibilities.
Creating 2D Games With Unity3D Part 1 | Rocket 5 Studios One of my goals for 2011 is to write at least one new blog post every week. I’m going to kick off that goal this week by starting a multi-part series on creating 2D games with Unity3D. Please feel free to add comments below, especially if you have insight or questions about making 2D games with Unity3D. Part 2 of the series is now available here. Introduction There are tons of different ways to handle creating 2D games in Unity3D. Tools For sprites, I use Sprite Manager 2 which is a 3rd party Unity plugin – you can purchase SM2 on the Above and Beyond Software website or from the Unity Asset Store. There is also a free version of Sprite Manager which you can read about in this Unity Forum post. Be sure to watch the tutorial videos on the AndB website as they’re loaded with information on how to use SM2. Main Camera When making 2D games, you’ll typically want to set your Camera’s Projection to Orthographic rather than perspective, which will give you a flat 2D view of the scene. Collision