- Jan 28, 2020
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As an aspiring Dev this is very useful to read and for any other fellow amateur dev out there too I bet, I hope I don't stumble on these mistakes, thanks for giving out your insight.
How to write bad , unsuccessful games . Feel free not to read this
- Thread starter lancelotdulak
- Start date
- Dec 2, 2019
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There's like a hundred GDC talks on game design alone. It's a very huge part that goes unnoticed in game development, but plays an important role. If you're trying to introduce something new, or think out of the box, I'd recommend sifting through the GDC vault and learning what you can from the talks.
- Sep 4, 2017
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This btw was my take on varia, but as you can see I had to totally butcher her color palette.
- Jan 15, 2020
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I'm about to publish my first release and it's very insightful to read these game design threads.
C'mon ppl, there is a hundreds of games without even slightly realistic psychology, with "game mechanic" determined by visual novel games engine (left click, then look on the texts and pictures), with real porn "art" and "plot" about mommy, son and daughter acting all the time in the small apartment -- and games like this are very popular. 
I like it a lot. much better than the original art. Body is fairly realistic. Face is great. hair is great. If you want to change the skin the best way for this is probably just in the surfaces tab. Most likely simply remove some blue. Make sure you select all of the body (arms, legs, trunk) if you do. Youre trying to do more cartoon art.. i wouldnt touch it.. its fantastic
Um those games reek of psychology... and a pure vn isnt a game engine.. it's a visual novel. And yes.. those are plots.C'mon ppl, there is a hundreds of games without even slightly realistic psychology, with "game mechanic" determined by visual novel games engine (left click, then look on the texts and pictures), with real porn "art" and "plot" about mommy, son and daughter acting all the time in the small apartment -- and games like this are very popular.
r/gamedesign is garbage as are the fb groups. Some of the gdc talks are brilliant. (if you ignore the ones by the sociopaths telling people to set up pavlovian traps to take childrens money)
Sure pure vn isnt a game engine.
But Ren'Py is. And Ren'Py products by some uncertain reason often called as games and they may be very popular.Python is a programming language. Renpy is a variation. It's not an engine. And vn's arent games therye vn'sSure pure vn isnt a game engine.
Some things for those of you who want to make games but have no graphics or programming experience:
Python/renpy, c++, perl, basic, c, are languages. Python is a scripting language: it reads text files and executes the commands. Perl and some basics are also scripting. c/c++, c# are compiled languages. They are VERY fast.. python is probably coded in c. You dont need c/c++ speed for vn's or any of these games. Python is fine. You could also do them in vbasic or.. perl.. or literally any language capable of displaying a graphics file and text. ANY language.. python is just the current fad. it too shall pass
Unity, UE4 , Cryengine etc are Game engines. Theyre toolkits that allow you to build/edit games easily. UE4 is VERY complex and incredibly powerful. Unity is slightly less powerful, Much less complex. Unity is a good choice for adult games. It's far more powerful than python but easy to use. Yes.. you can learn to use it.. you can probably open it and play with it and use it to make vn style games the first night.
Iray, Vray, Arnold, Octane etc are render engines. ALL they do is take a data file and make a picture from it. Daz uses iray a VERY high quality gpu rendering engine which will do either unbiased or biased renders. Octane is unbiased and uses techniques that make it faster... But..if youre looking for photorealistic/high quality... iray will actually get there faster. Octane will produce really good renders really fast because of how it handles light. So you know >all 3d render engines raytrace<. The differences are in how.
Vray, Arnold etc are CPU render engines. If you have a giant server farm full of 64 core cpu's theyll produce incredible renders . If you dont they really really wont. Youre better off rendering with a 5 year old system you put a gtx 1070 in than you are with a threadripper and a $20 graphics card if youre looking for rendering speed. CPU's are jack of all trades processors. GPUs are extremely dedicated processors. They do one thing well and nothing else
Programming is easy. ANYONE can learn it. It's based on a tiny number of logic/math instructions. High level languages simply put layer upon layer of functions on top of those that make it easier to do very complex things. And much harder to do simple things.
This is a compilable c program
#include <stdio.h> // this tells the compiler to include a file that lets you write to the screen, get keyboard input etc
void main () // the main loop of EVERY c program. if it isnt called from here in some way it doesnt happen
{ // beginning of main loop
printf ("hello world"); // tells the program to print hello world in the programs window
} // end of the program. from this basis you can go on to create anything from a text editor to battlefield 4.
Python/renpy, c++, perl, basic, c, are languages. Python is a scripting language: it reads text files and executes the commands. Perl and some basics are also scripting. c/c++, c# are compiled languages. They are VERY fast.. python is probably coded in c. You dont need c/c++ speed for vn's or any of these games. Python is fine. You could also do them in vbasic or.. perl.. or literally any language capable of displaying a graphics file and text. ANY language.. python is just the current fad. it too shall pass
Unity, UE4 , Cryengine etc are Game engines. Theyre toolkits that allow you to build/edit games easily. UE4 is VERY complex and incredibly powerful. Unity is slightly less powerful, Much less complex. Unity is a good choice for adult games. It's far more powerful than python but easy to use. Yes.. you can learn to use it.. you can probably open it and play with it and use it to make vn style games the first night.
Iray, Vray, Arnold, Octane etc are render engines. ALL they do is take a data file and make a picture from it. Daz uses iray a VERY high quality gpu rendering engine which will do either unbiased or biased renders. Octane is unbiased and uses techniques that make it faster... But..if youre looking for photorealistic/high quality... iray will actually get there faster. Octane will produce really good renders really fast because of how it handles light. So you know >all 3d render engines raytrace<. The differences are in how.
Vray, Arnold etc are CPU render engines. If you have a giant server farm full of 64 core cpu's theyll produce incredible renders . If you dont they really really wont. Youre better off rendering with a 5 year old system you put a gtx 1070 in than you are with a threadripper and a $20 graphics card if youre looking for rendering speed. CPU's are jack of all trades processors. GPUs are extremely dedicated processors. They do one thing well and nothing else
Programming is easy. ANYONE can learn it. It's based on a tiny number of logic/math instructions. High level languages simply put layer upon layer of functions on top of those that make it easier to do very complex things. And much harder to do simple things.
This is a compilable c program
#include <stdio.h> // this tells the compiler to include a file that lets you write to the screen, get keyboard input etc
void main () // the main loop of EVERY c program. if it isnt called from here in some way it doesnt happen
{ // beginning of main loop
printf ("hello world"); // tells the program to print hello world in the programs window
} // end of the program. from this basis you can go on to create anything from a text editor to battlefield 4.
- Sep 4, 2017
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I dont own an nvidia gpu so i had to use 3delight I think I forgot to switch the skin to rsl material
I actually like it a Lot man i dont think i could make that character. Nothing wrong with 3delight anyway. Honestly that looks like an octane render. You actually have to do a lot of work to make octane NOT look like that
- Dec 2, 2019
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I feel the need to clarify this for people reading. Python can be called a scripting language, but I think that's a poor generalization. Python source gets compiled to bytecode which then is interpreted using CPython or JIT which then essentially compiles your program. Python alone is a pretty fast language. It doesn't compare to the speed of C/C++, but that's because you're comparing apples to oranges. The purpose of Python is to give the user a quick workflow for development. In the time it takes you to write a game in python, it will take you exponentially longer to write in C/C++. The benefit of using a lower level language is the advantage of handling memory, garbage collection, caching, threading, etc. For huge games, this is important for performance. For smaller games, it's an unnecessary workload.
There is hardly an overall "better" option between unreal and unity. It highly depends on what your project is, what you need out of the engine, and personal preference. Neither is objectively better. I recommend anybody reading this who is on edge of deciding which engine. Do research on both, determine what your game needs and what engine will help you achieve your goal the quickest, and go from there.
I'm literally dying right now. Comparing a hello world program to battlefield 4. The only difference is about 10,000 hours of experience. Programming is not this easy. I'm not saying it's unmanageable, but this is a colossal understatement. There is so much more involved. Design patterns, data structures, geometry, heavy use of complex logic systems, and I don't even know where to start when it comes to 3D applications. Telling people this is just gonna make them waste there time after they discover the true difficulty behind learning a language like C or C++. If you're writing a game in C, you're either absolutely mad, or a wizard. Point is, if you want to learn a language then expect to spend hundreds of hours reading online documentation, teaching yourself, and banging your head against the wall. It's fun, but it's not pretty.
1 . Python IS a scripting language. It is Not compiled to ml. It is compressed. It isnt comparing apples to oranges its comparing two languages.
2. You literally dont know what youre talking about. The learning curve on UE4 is 5x that of unity. And Unity isnt as capable as UE4 by far.
3. Youre dying because.. you cant understand english. Ive written games in both c and c++. Im making a wild guess you havent. I wrote my first 3d program in pure C in the 80s on an ibm pc clone that was 1/3 as fast as my atari st. I wrote my first real 3d game in c/c++ via directx. No 'game engines". If you "learned " by sitting down and reading 100s of hours of docs you did it wrong. Professionals search for information as they need it. Because the sheer volume out there, especially considering the job is Literally becoming an expert on something as you need to. Theres a reason IDE's have automated help and function lookups as well as a reason things like stack overflow exists.
4. Hello world is the first program EVERY programmer learns in EVERY language.
- Dec 2, 2019
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I'm saying that your description of a scripting language isn't consistent. Just because a language doesn't directly use a compiler doesn't mean it's not compiling. I think the better description for python would be an an interpreted language, as you can run different interpreters to get different results. Therefore the language isn't just "reading text files and executing commands." It's actually being compiled to bytecode and interpreted. I don't know where you're getting this idea of compression. Scripting languages to me, are languages implemented through an API that enable you to provide instructions to a pre existing program. World of Warcraft uses Lua as a scripting language, but Lua itself isn't a scripting language. Roblox uses Lua as a scripting language. These are examples of a language being sandboxed in an API for scripting purposes. This is just my opinion, not the objective truth.
Different tools for different jobs. By your logic, everybody should write everything in C, or assembly, because it has the least amount of abstractions and gives the best output. There's a reason why languages undergo abstraction after abstraction and why we have lower level and higher level programming languages. It enables the user to get specific tasks done quicker, provided the task fits the criteria of the language or abstraction they are using. If you're making a 2D platformer game, you'll have a better time in Unity than Unreal. If you're making an open world sandbox game, unreal is gonna be more forgiving. They're toolsets. Idk how you can have both an understanding of these different engines, and be unaware of the controversial debate about which one is objectively better.
I doubt you've written any completed games in C without the use of an engine that compares to games written inside an engine. These engines and toolsets exist for a reason. They provide layers of abstractions to make development easier to digest, the workflow more manageable, and do the heavy lifting that's required in the background. As somebody who claims to be proficient in one of the arguably most difficult languages to learn, I'd think you'd respect what I'm saying.
It's possible that you've written games in C++, but again, I doubt it. Just because someone who has, I know would have a great deal of respect and knowledge that comparing a Hello World application to any kind of game development is just not feasible at all. Yes it's the first program you write or whatever. All it does is demonstrate syntax, compiling or interpretation, and I/O. If you wanna be helpful, and show how "simple" it is to learn C++ or C. Paste the source for an actual game.
I don't wanna derail this thread so my discord is kinderalpha#6818 if you wanna further this discussion. In summary, I think you're doing a disservice of explaining the languages and how difficult they are to pick up. I think it's better to approach these kinds of topics with realistic and humble standards, then to say they're very easy and it's "just text in a file".
Python is a scripting language and you nkow it. Youre nitpicking because it's compressed. And theres nothing wrong with scripting languages. i happen to love perl.
At no time did i say you shouldnt use different tools for different jobs. In fact ive reiterated that in post after post.
Renpy is perfect for VN's and simple vn games. In fact c (or c++) would be great for the kind of games renpy is good for though learning c/c++ to make them is a bit crazy.
For something a little more to a Lot more advanced unity is a great choice. UE4 gets deep , its IDE is pretty bad and doing a lot of things (like how it handles animations ) can be an illogical nightmare. But it produces stunning results.
Yes.. ive written games in c and c++. Just so you know.. thats how it used to be done. ID software didnt lease an engine to write doom. Rainbird didnt lease an engine to build Carrier command. The use of full game engines is leased engines is pretty recent. A site called "3d engine list " aka 3del used to keep track of the .. very primitive 'engines' that were out there. And most of them were simple 3d engines akin to the 3d functions of directx.
Pasting the source for a game in c++ and expecting a novice to understand it is quite literally insane. Even for c. Even for a very experienced c++ developer to understand someone elses code you sit down with it and some coffee and study for hours or days or months. Hello world is taught for a reason. Take that program and the user can add in user input. Then they can move to switching and variables etc etc etc. I in fact reccomend all newbies learn in either C or an old fashioned interpreted basic. Because they expose the basics of all programming . Switches, variables, operators etc without levels of obfuscation like Classes and OOP.
- Dec 2, 2019
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I'm just nitpicking your definitions and choice of words. I think you've clarified enough in this post for me to move on, haha. My whole point was you made it seem like picking up C/C++ and writing a game with it from scratch could be done in just a few weeks or month for the first time. Also, when I say game, I mean something with comparitive quality to those which can be found on here.
My purpose was to ensure anybody considering C/C++ from your post to reconsider what they're doing and using a more suitable language or tool. Abstraction isn't always a bad thing. I wouldn't recommend anyone learning how to code and then code an adult game in C/C++ from scratch unless you're really doing something revolutionary and have a lot of free time.