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How I tried to get into game development and failed

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Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#101

Post by vinceguidry »

Matheus28 wrote: post #90
nathan_f77 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you written any development posts like this? I'm sure everyone on HN would be really interested to hear your thoughts about this post, and how it compares to the development of agar.io. Did you sort of just get lucky with the game mechanic, or was it something that you put a lot of thought into? Was agar.io originally supposed to be a different game?

There was a post with some technical details on Agar.io a while ago back when it was released (>2 years ago). A year after Agar.io I made Diep.io, which is also fairly successful (but not nearly as crazy as agar.io), so that points to it not being completely based on luck :) I just make what feels fun. For a perspective on development cycle: the initial version of Agar.io took 1 week, while Diep.io took less than a m…

I was just playing Diep, great game, thanks for making it! Glad you finally fixed the bug that was making the game crash my whole machine on OSX!

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#102

Post by freeflight »

swat17 wrote: post #67
jmull wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, wait a minute. The author started with a simple, fun-to-play game, worked on it iteratively until it reached a certain level, did a release push, and continued to iteratively improve the game. (I realize that "fun-to-play" is subjective, but that's the author's call at that point.) I'm trying to see how this is fundamentally at odds with what you're thinking the approach should be? If you, as the creator of a g…

> how could you justify not resolving it prior to release? I'm not objecting to him addressing the lag, I'm objecting to him resolving it first . Until you've built something people want to play, addressing lag (and similar tertiary problems) is solving a hypothetical problem for a hypothetical player. And it may well be wasted effort, if you never nail the core product. But if you approach it from the other directio…

> Until you've built something people want to play, addressing lag (and similar tertiary problems) is solving a hypothetical problem for a hypothetical player.

Sadly those are not always hypothetical players. Gamers can be very demanding when it comes to such things as performance and especially network performance in anything related to PvP.

Tho, I agree with your premise: Have something that's fun first, then deal with everything around it. I just don't think it's that easy in practice when a lot of the player feedback boils down to "I couldn't tell you if the game is fun or not because your crappy netcode keeps getting me killed, that's not fun at all!".

In that regard, Steam forums for EA titles are sometimes their very own circle of hell.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#103

Post by freeflight »

Practicality wrote: post #69

I have been having a lot of fun playing this game with lots of others here on Hacker news. Some suggestions: 1) Make the levels more obvious. It's not clear why players are stronger than others for some time. It would also be nice to see how far I need to go to level up more clearly. 2) ADD CHAT! I can't emphasize this enough. We need to be able to yell at each other and complain and work together. 3) Add the ability…

> 6) Don't deduct any stats when I level up. Sometimes when you level up you are suddenly slower. I shouldn't get punished for leveling up.

I think that's for balance reasons and I kinda like that dynamic. New players that join are weak and fast, high level players are powerful but slow, that way new players at least can run away from a hopeless fight against a way higher level.

The snowballing is already pretty bad as it is, high level tanks nearly instagib the low level ones. If high level tanks would be just as fast as the low level ones then no late joiner would stand a chance and the field would be dominated by that one guy/gal who managed to get max level first.

My suggestion would be to set the game to a fixed zoom level. Right now players can get quite an advantage by using the browser zoom function to zoom out and see further than players with standard browser settings.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#105

Post by throwaway7645 »

WalterBright wrote: post #100
hyperpallium wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Scratch your own itch"; if you like it, maybe others will too; instant user feedback

The same idea has worked for a lot of things for me. I often get told I'm a unique snowflake in what I like, but it turns out that's not true at all.

Write any games in D in your spare time sir? If not commercial, just for fun? I'd be curious to hear how good D can be in that area.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#106

Post by WalterBright »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #105
WalterBright wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same idea has worked for a lot of things for me. I often get told I'm a unique snowflake in what I like, but it turns out that's not true at all.

Write any games in D in your spare time sir? If not commercial, just for fun? I'd be curious to hear how good D can be in that area.

D is used by Remedy Games for Quantum Break:

http://dconf.org/2016/talks/watson.html

http://dconf.org/2017/talks/watson.html

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#107

Post by throwaway7645 »

WalterBright wrote: post #106
throwaway7645 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Write any games in D in your spare time sir? If not commercial, just for fun? I'd be curious to hear how good D can be in that area.

D is used by Remedy Games for Quantum Break: http://dconf.org/2016/talks/watson.html http://dconf.org/2017/talks/watson.html

Thanks Walter! It looks like there might be a Empires port in D as well. I'm sure that was much easier than C.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#108

Post by ethbro »

Domenic_S wrote: post #41
swat17 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems so obvious reading his post that he went at this backwards. The basic idea of developing and iterating on a lightweight MVP is completely absent. I'm genuinely curious - because I see this error replicated all the time when engineers try to take a side project to market - why otherwise rational people do this. This approach is obviously doomed to failure. I understand that as programmers we enjoy solving tec…

I know like 2 engineers who are really, really good at coming at problems from a business perspective and I know like 70 who work the way you describe. Maybe it's because if you acknowledge the business as the most important, then engineering is only a means to an end and not important. I think that's an error in reasoning, but it makes some sense.

To me, it's having the humility to accept that someone may know less about tech than you, but still more about the problem at hand.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#109

Post by dsego »

The game is well made, but imo the graphics are pretty bland. Find another designer. And why not have a tank 2 or 3 sizes bigger? Also, maybe robots were a better idea, they are new and exciting, they can shoot lasers, crush enemies, who knows. Tanks are a bit boring.

Edit: And I think it's missing an easy enemy bot, something lower level, so even the newcomer can power up (not crates).

Addendum:

    - No explosions when tank is destroyed?
    - Movement is very linear, no acceleration or inertia. 
    - Ramming doesn't inflict any damage.

Re: How I tried to get into game development and failed

#110

Post by juststeve »

to the developer/creator： i know very little about game development but here is some quick feedback: 1. fix the controls. i'm not sure if i was getting lag, but the tank was moving all over the place and never in a straight line. 2. add sound 3. enhance the graphics. pay someone to make them look really good
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