Oh man it's been so many years since I've read some AS3 code.
I'm still pissed they abandoned the EcmaScript 4 proposal back around 2007-2008.
VVVVVV Source Code
71–80 of 95 posts
Re: VVVVVV Source Code
#72Every time this is brought up, I think of https://vvvv.org/
Was expecting the creative coding environment as well.
Re: VVVVVV Source Code
#73VVVVVV is a superb demonstration that graphics don't make a game -- music does.
I love the Hotline Miami series, but there's no way I'd love it nearly as much without that absolutely killer soundtrack.
Re: VVVVVV Source Code
#74Such a great gesture for one of the best platformers ever released.
Re: VVVVVV Source Code
#75When I was near the end of high school, my family visited London, and I was thinking about being a game dev. So I sent Terry Cavanagh an email, and to my surprise he completely agreed to get lunch. He was extremely kind, gave me a lot of interesting life advice. I remember him saying that he got most of his ideas just from playing around with mechanics and experimenting a lot, he was never really one to get grand vis…
I've learned two phrases hold true:
* You can't get a no if you don't ask * "Never meet your heroes" is a sham and you need to meet a few shitbags before you can really appreciate the realest of people.
Re: VVVVVV Source Code
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds great and confirms my suspicions that gaming coders learn more than standard coders do.
this is the correct takeaway, in my opinion. game developers must consider things that people like enterprise developers never concern themselves with, like latency and performance. these days, at least where I work, everything is dominated by network latency. no matter what you do in your application logic, network latency will always dominate response time. with games, there is no latency unless you are writing a m…
Factorio is black magic fuckery as far as I'm concerned.
Maybe it's because my factory hasn't gotten big enough or I'm playing a MOSTLY vanilla install, but all that's happening and the game is still only using 2% of my CPU.
I can't imagine the immense size of a factory you'd need before the game started stuttering.
Re: VVVVVV Source Code
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds great and confirms my suspicions that gaming coders learn more than standard coders do.
this is the correct takeaway, in my opinion. game developers must consider things that people like enterprise developers never concern themselves with, like latency and performance. these days, at least where I work, everything is dominated by network latency. no matter what you do in your application logic, network latency will always dominate response time. with games, there is no latency unless you are writing a m…
The comment reads as ragebait or sarcasm but I actually can’t tell.
I don’t want to take away from Game developers but as a “corporate developer” I can attest that a lot of what you said about us is blatantly false.
I’ve spent a lot of time optimizing the performance of many backend services. This is a very standard practice. Having highly performant code can save companies a ton of money on compute.
In fact I’ve worked on a stateless web server who’s architecture was completely designed around a custom chunked/streaming protocol specifically to minimize latency. All changes to the service went through rigorous performance testing and wouldn’t be released if it failed certain latency and throughout thresholds.
Re: VVVVVV Source Code
#78When I was near the end of high school, my family visited London, and I was thinking about being a game dev. So I sent Terry Cavanagh an email, and to my surprise he completely agreed to get lunch. He was extremely kind, gave me a lot of interesting life advice. I remember him saying that he got most of his ideas just from playing around with mechanics and experimenting a lot, he was never really one to get grand vis…
Wow, that is cool! Did it help/affect your later choices with your career, did you end up a game developer, or at least try it or so? Always fun with closure! :)
I made a very mediocre platformer in my senior year of high school, published on itch.io. I ended up becoming a software developer, which I enjoy 80% as much, but without any burnout or worrying about the superstar economics of being a game dev. Once the singularity hits, maybe I'll make more games.
Re: VVVVVV Source Code
#79When I was near the end of high school, my family visited London, and I was thinking about being a game dev. So I sent Terry Cavanagh an email, and to my surprise he completely agreed to get lunch. He was extremely kind, gave me a lot of interesting life advice. I remember him saying that he got most of his ideas just from playing around with mechanics and experimenting a lot, he was never really one to get grand vis…
> I remember him saying that he got most of his ideas just from playing around with mechanics and experimenting a lot This is important. Too many people assume that novel ideas come from abstract concepts. Yes they can, but they can equaly arise from playing with the medium.
Playing retro games seems like a good way to get ideas. The VVVVVV gravity mechanic is pretty much Gravity Man from Megaman 5 (I guess Megaman is not the first time it was used either).
Mining retro game mechanics was probably easier at the time VVVVVV was developed as the explosion of indy games has probably reused the best forgotten ones of the 80s/90s. It's getting close the time mechanics from 00s games can be reused though...
Re: VVVVVV Source Code
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I remember him saying that he got most of his ideas just from playing around with mechanics and experimenting a lot This is important. Too many people assume that novel ideas come from abstract concepts. Yes they can, but they can equaly arise from playing with the medium.
Playing retro games seems like a good way to get ideas. The VVVVVV gravity mechanic is pretty much Gravity Man from Megaman 5 (I guess Megaman is not the first time it was used either). Mining retro game mechanics was probably easier at the time VVVVVV was developed as the explosion of indy games has probably reused the best forgotten ones of the 80s/90s. It's getting close the time mechanics from 00s games can be re…
I don't see why you can't reuse whatever mechanics you like.
Return of the Obra Dinn was a 2018 mystery puzzle game, where you have to figure out how everyone died in an ill-fated voyage at sea. Amazing game.
I searched Reddit for "games like Obra Dinn", and this led me to Case of the Golden Idol, a 2022 game with similar mechanics. The developers were quite open about being inspired and influenced by Obra Dinn -- and they ended up creating something in the same genre, but very much their own creation, with their own flavor. And also very enjoyable.
Originality is nice, but I'm not at all convinced it's a prerequisite for quality.