Sure, you need a good grasp of mathematics, but that was my point. But do you really need discrete math? Do you really need anything beyond algebra? Most games never use anything that complicated. I've made a dozen games or so, and never once did I use anything beyond trig.

I think that's highly subjective and depends a lot on what kind of game you want to make. Certainly there are lots of games you can make with only basic algebra and trigonometric knowledge. But I think a good knowledge of math expands the horizon of what you can technically tackle, and might even give you ideas for novel concepts.

As soon as you want to do anything in 3D, you need quite a lot of math. Even in 2D, if you want to move beyond purely sprite-based graphics, you are going to need math. If you want to do good AI, you are going to need math. If you want to base your game on a simulation, you need math. If you want to incorporate any kind of physics, you need math.

The list goes on. Besides, studying math teaches you lots of valuable meta-skills in areas like problem solving, structured thinking etc.

Even many indie games rely heavily on more advanced concepts. Look at all the physics-based games, or look at Dwarf Fortress. I mean Tarn Adams was a math prof before he quit to work fulltime on DF, and the amount of algorithmic complexity in that game boggles the mind.

Sorry for the rant, I just might have completely derailed the thread. I'm biased about this topic, obviously...

Thanks for the pointers, people. Whoah, that game design section on gamedev.net is overwhelmingly huge, I really need more time (as always, the biggest problem...) to dig into that.

I find it difficult to say specifically what I'm looking for; frankly, I don't know myself. But hopefully these articles and blogs will get me started and give me a clearer idea of what I'm doing.

The discussion about 1D games a few pages back has inspired me to try my hand at some pseudo-1D stuff (which makes this my third simultaneous WIP, sigh). Contrarian that I am, I had to do it with a twist and make the thing circular. So, I spent the last two nights studying B-spline theory (yay for maths) and implementing some basic algorithms, and I got this far:



The crosses are actually spline control points you can drag around in realtime, it looks cool. Also, the "boxes" slowly rotate around the center.

But the main idea which isn't implemented yet is the following: if stuff can't move through each other in a one-dimensional world, then we have to introduce some sort of wormholes which connect remote parts of the 1D continuum with each other. I plan to do this by having actual tunnels go between some of the boxes, and stuff could go through these tunnels, much like wormholes are usually described in science fiction, just here in a 1D universe.

As usual, I don't have the slightest idea how to make a game out of this.

Oh, and the window caption is just a working title and actually bogus at the moment since there's no "twisting" of the ribbon going on here. In fact "Rosen" might be a nicer title for what I have in mind, though the reference is probably slightly too obscure.

You're actively pushing those guys, aren't you?

I'm still holding my breath for the precise moment at which this turns into the "best indie game ever". I wonder if they will use that as their title...

Ah, I remember that being posted a few months back in the Spring forum when I was still heavily into TA:Spring. IIRC, the community frowned upon it because it contained RPG elements or something... those guys are pretty conservative when it comes to that kind of stuff. Anyway, it looks completely stunning, visually at least. My PC couldn't run it anyway, I'm pretty sure about that, but I'd really like to know what new ideas they have integrated into the gameplay.

I'd say that trailer kicks some serious ass: http://www.gamespot.com/video/944424/6194975/videoplayerpop?
Also, scantily clad fantasy chicks. Can't go without those, can you?

I dunno why but that method sounds undelicious.
Unimmediate attacks when you lift up the button as opposed to when you press it? Nyeh.

Bah, everything I bring up in this thread is naysayed      

I still think it could work. When you just want to do a normal attack, you're gonna push and release the button very quickly anyway, so there's probably less delay than with a fixed delay, and if you want to do a directional attack, you're only gonna hold the button long enough for you to press the directional key, so again you're about as quick as you can be. Plus, as soon as you push the button down, the character could go into some "ready to strike" pose, so you'd get visual feedback immediately that something is happening.

That probably was clear as mud.

But the idea with the timeout is good. Isn't that more or less what I proposed anyway, just with an upper limit on the time you can keep the button down?

Anyway, it would be nice to have different versions of the engine demo to try these things out...

The jump delay could also be shortened, although that brings up another problem. It makes it much more difficult to use ^ attacks without jumping. The same is true for the 'fall-through-platform' delay.

What about making it so that you have to push down the attack button, then you can optionally press any directional modifiers, and only when you release the attack key is the attack unleashed?

I've tried the engine demo too now, and it basically feels "right", though for a fast-paced action game I guess something with even more immediate response might be even better. But that's probably just a matter of minor tweaking.

Also, I agree online play would be a huge draw. I guess that's not really feasible with Game Maker, is it? But whatever, if this thing does get off the ground, then maybe a reimplementation in another framework is more feasible. At the moment it's most important to get something out there, I guess.

And one last question: any reason you specifically mentioned Xbox 360 controllers as opposed to any generic gamepad? Surely any old gamepad would do?

I also had problems with the interface. Continually having to travel between the track "palette" and the playing grid is no fun, nor is RSI 

I have yet another interface suggestion: use the cursor keys to move the currently highlighted tile in the playing field around, then I can simply use the mouse to select the tiles from the palette and don't have to ever move it to the playing field.

Another thing: I don't know if it's something with my computer, but the game uses 100% CPU all the time and feels very unresponsive. That feels pretty shoddy.

A little program that will keep you awake on late night development:
http://www.grc.com/freeware/clickey.htm

:D

Oh, man. This just made me think of a little TSR utility I wrote in assembler for DOS back in the day which did exactly this via the built-in speaker. I was armed with nothing else but the DEBUG program which came with DOS at the time, a book about the IBM PC by Peter Norton and Ralph Brown's interrupt list, which I had snatched off the cover disk of some cheap shareware mag. It's pretty amazing to think I figured all that stuff out without the help of something like the Internet. I still remember the sense of accomplishment I got when it finally worked. (insert dreamy-eyed emoticon here) Those were the days... right?

...then I suggest you find some books and read away.

Hm. Do you have any literature in particular in mind with that statement? I'm a bit of a theory person myself, tending to go a lot into the theory of whatever interests me and overanalyze stuff, and I think that's a certain danger in and of itself, because at some point you just have to stop thinking and actually do something. So I think this is kind of a dangerous route for me. Actually this community here is the first thing in a long, long time that has given me so many ideas that I just had to buckle down and start something, and now I have three projects going on at once, and of course its completely overwhelming, but I love it. It's much better than the void I felt before...

Hm, I'm not sure I agree. There's at least one indie publisher which has specialized in strategy games (http://www.strategyfirst.com/en/games/genre/); I seem to recall there was another one, but can't remember the name right now.
As another example, there's Strategist (http://www.oxeyegames.com/strategist/), and I actually thought that Defcon had pretty deep gameplay, although I only played it only for a few days, IIRC. What made you think it was shallow?
Wikipedia has an entire section devoted to indie TBS games, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-based_strategy#Indie_PC_games. I'm not sure how representative that is, though.

Would it be possible to keep all characters as much as possible in their original art styles instead? It would probably look pretty jumbled, but on the other hand it might be more authentic, and perhaps fun in a B-game cut and paste sort of way...

if you wanted that.. you'd just use 'MUGEN' or something.
as much as i love the original artwork.. this seems like it would sort of cheapen the experience.(also not to mention scale/size issues)

Well, I wasn't really talking about just taking the original sprites and dropping them into a game. I was more thinking along the lines of keeping the original feel of the characters. But I see your point, and it seems the majority of the people would rather have a unified art style, and I'm cool with that.

Awesome video!

New page for The Prince of the Island of Beautiful Women!

...Exclamation point!

I just wanted to say that this has gone into my RSS reader two pages back from now.

Yes, I will port an existing game to a machine that consists of levers, springs, wires, cogs, steam power, and other pre-electronic technology.

That's the best thing I've heard all day.

well... http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=2286.msg57198#msg57198

I'm sorry for being a dick again.

Sorry, I didn't see that before. I am compelled to agree that such a contraption would indeed serve as a most noble and promising platform for your endeavors

In other words, make something for that!! And I want the real deal, with having to carefully balance the LP onto the player, manually winding up the clockwork etc. Actually that could be the main part of the game, with the game-within-the-game just being some pong clone or whatever.

Hot.

What about a virtual "gentleman's" tearom in which you have a shelf with several LPs on them.
So you have different games like "demakes" of Pong, Pacman, Super Mario Bros., Zelda: OoT or Cave Story.
You have to select the LP (with nice cover art) and put it onto the Vinylotron.

Awesome.

For great justice.

For.... the win.

FOR... TRAN.

For... love! 0_0

Awwwww.

Yes, I will port an existing game to a machine that consists of levers, springs, wires, cogs, steam power, and other pre-electronic technology.

That's the best thing I've heard all day.

well... http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=2286.msg57198#msg57198

I'm sorry for being a dick again.

Sorry, I didn't see that before. I am compelled to agree that such a contraption would indeed serve as a most noble and promising platform for your endeavors

In other words, make something for that!! And I want the real deal, with having to carefully balance the LP onto the player, manually winding up the clockwork etc. Actually that could be the main part of the game, with the game-within-the-game just being some pong clone or whatever.

This sounds very cool, will have to try the demo later. Just one thing:

Graphics will be made in pixel art. Oracle's mock-up had a pretty good art style.

Would it be possible to keep all characters as much as possible in their original art styles instead? It would probably look pretty jumbled, but on the other hand it might be more authentic, and perhaps fun in a B-game cut and paste sort of way...

Though I mostly agree with the rest of your post, I think this assumption is just bunk:

And to be sure when the experimental group was playing video games the control group would necessarily be doing NOTHING else, because if they were it could invalidate the data.

One possible argument against video games is precisely that the time you spend playing them could otherwise be spent on something else, e.g. creating. This is especially relevant since we probably all know how time-consuming and addictive games can be; I guess I'm not the only one here who has spent entire nights in front of the screen, helping my settlers expand or my civilization develop or my heroes fight evil or whatever. And that wasn't only when I was a kid, it still happens to me from time to time (actually, with no parental supervision, it's probably more common now...). So, if I had spent all that time practicing guitar, or drawing, or making games of my own, I would probably now be better at those things than I am now. On the other hand, those games that completely draw you in are often inspirational, I think, and have often motivated me to pursue my own ambitions especially with respect to game making. Then, I guess, it comes down to the question whether games are a worthwhile pastime at all or whether the whole gaming/game making thing is just another vicious circle...

He claimed that some study had determined that video games were proven to destroy creativity in small children.

Footnotes or it didn't happen.   

Right. Also, http://circleversussquare.com/?ID=56.

Plus,

. (This is *very* fun.)