I personally hate it, but Pokémon players don't seem to mind...

Pokemon was amazing back before you could wiki it. All the bizarre rumours floating around the schoolyard, testing different actions to see what caused the inconsistent results, developing weird habits (everyone had their own weird button rain dance when throwing pokeballs, but after reading the source, the game never looks at the keypad during that sequence!)

The main thing, though, was that knowing the hidden mechanics wasn't required to play, enjoy or beat the game. Things that were integral to success, like weaknesses/resistances and levelling, were explained concisely by in-game characters.

So, directly: If a trip to the wiki is required to play, enjoy or beat the game, I'd call that a failure. Any other time is okay.

I will give you my advice from atop my castle wrought of abandoned projects and good intentions.

I have created two rules for my game development:
1) Don't tell anyone what I'm making until it's playable. This one is particularly hard, but the satisfaction of people telling me it's a good idea unfortunately is strong enough that I end up losing motivation to actually bring the idea into reality.
2) Don't allow myself to work obsessively on anything. Churning out 2000 lines of code in 12 hour days is great fun for a very short time, but just like an all you can eat buffet of pancakes, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. In the same vein as a good entertainer, I always leave myself wanting more. Even if I'm in the middle of something, I just write a handover note for myself the next day, and clock out. It's just like dieting - if you try to do it all at once, you end up back where you started.

Low-HP alarms. That's irked me since Pokemon Blue.

This one is super specific but: In a limited-resources game, enemies that seem to have unlimited resources, but drop almost nothing. Like, you have 4 bullets for your rifle. The enemies are using the same rifle, and use suppressing fire like they're getting paid by the bullet, you finally kill one, and they drop two bullets. 

Games that give you a waypoint when you haven't found the right way after 5 minutes. It's like someone telling you the answer while you're trying to solve a puzzle. Makes the developers look insecure.

Ultra broad, but: Games that offer fun ways to play, but only allow you to progress by playing in a less interesting manner.

Dealmaker/breaker: Wheel suppport?

Does this algorithm actually need to be more efficient? If there are not performance issues you should just continue adding more features. I don't know how slow GameMaker is but I doubt checking for circle/line collisions could ever be very expensive. You should be concerned with how much time you spend writing the code not just how long it takes the computer to run it.

This post is so perfectly in line with your avatar and user message. 

There are two primary causes of lethargy: Inactivity and vitamin deficiency.

Get your heart rate up to "panting so hard you're going to vomit" at least three times a week for at least 15 minutes, and lift some heavy weights.

Get a blood test and get them to check your vitamin D and iron levels. If they're both in normal range, get them to check vitamin C (this requires a more difficult test since it has to be processed within a few hours of taking blood). Supplement vitamin B12 regardless (preferably in bread additive form). If all of the above fails, get your testosterone levels checked.

I'm willing to bet it'll be either vitamin D or C.

Like I said, the circle size is not defined by me, it's defined by input. The text needs to fit in the given circle.

The size of the oval is not something I can control, it's provided by the input. If you just center the text, it spills over the edges at the top and bottom of the oval.

I want to wrap a string of arbitrary length to an axis-aligned oval of arbitrary width and height. Think the center-aligned text in a comic book text bubble.

Basically, like this:


It doesn't have to be exact, just relatively pleasant-looking. Also the algorithm doesn't have to be efficient. The text can be resized if need be, as well.

My idea for doing this is:

• Define the "oval" as two x=ay^2+c curves (one reversed)
• Make an off-screen text box containing the whole string in one line, get the width
• while the first space break is too wide for the top of the bubble (+ a margin), reduce font size
• Stepping through the two line equations by the height of the current font size, step through the string from the last line break until one line space before it is too wide for the curves, then break
• if you run out of bubble before you run out of text, reduce the font size and try again

I'm asking here because I have a habit of overcomplicating things. Does anyone know of a less tricksy way to do this?

This topic comes up a lot in the Design subforum, and as always, I'll link to this article with the disclaimer that it is long and rambly:  http://kotaku.com/5558166/in-praise-of-sticky-friction

I feel like I learned more about game design from this article than I have from any other source.

Yeah this isn't even vaguely okay. Like, on any level.

Unfortunately I don't think any of the 3x3 a's are readable in this context.

Disclaimer: I haven't played minecraft since very early on in the development process

The thing that makes me get bored of sandbox games is that none of them quite interact with me enough to hold my attention. No matter how intricate the sandbox is, even if there are all these procedurally generated events and stories and characters, even if it's multiplayer -- they start to feel lonely to me after a very short amount of time.

I can't really put my finger on why that is. But compared to linear games, where it feels like you're part of something, sandbox games make me feel like I'm poking at someone's diorama.

I personally recommend SoThink SWF Decompiler. It's worth the money, and has bailed me out several times.

Also I don't see why this subject would be taboo. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with decompiling software for the purpose of education, it's only an issue if you try to make profits or derivative works from the result.

A large amount of my programming knowledge came from leaked sourcecode and decompiling games I liked.

Use animation, have the player dig into the ground, lean against the movement direction and kick up dirt as he comes to a stop. That'll make it look like he actually has momentum and needs some time to stop, rather than making him look like he's sliding around on ice.

Nuts and bolts was an exercise in management and marketing failure. There was a glitch that caused the game to crash in mulitplayer games, reproduceable when parts broke off of vehicles. The solution the support team came up with? Remove part-breaking in multiplayer. That of course meant that some components used for jettisoning things didn't work. Solution? Ban any vehicles using those from multiplayer.

I'd love to see someone do a better job of a similar concept, so godspeed.

A metroidvania puzzle game in which you catch monsters and search for treasure?

Sound effect and narrative really helps. This is the technique that Corpse Party use for a very disgusting or terrifying scene. Making everything goes dark and use sound and let the players imagination go wild.

Example



The one I found scary/disturbing the most is when Yuka, a nine year old character, got her eye stabbed and gouged out. All these are done without nothing is shown on the screen except crying sound and some stabbing and various sound effect. It's pretty effective. At least to me.

I think Corpse Party's main technique is introducing some standard highschool SoL characters and then doing horrible things to them. I'd certainly call it a cheap scare.

I personally have used this theme for about four years, and would recommend it to anyone. It can be used at all times of day in all light conditions and is so very easy on the eyes.


It's not an fdz file though, I just frantically hacked it back into working conditions after flashdevelop's update broke it, so you need to copy it into your application data folder etc.
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?jx1yk5pfsjl1n85

11 kills, 4 deaths, I am the fastest draw in west.