- Ideas and Design
- Engines and Scripting
- Art, Animation, and Audio
- Aesthetics and the Ludonarrative
- Scope and Minimum Viable Product
- Resources
"free, having liberty, at liberty"
All software discussed in this presentation is free, as in "free speech".
Please visit the Free Software Foundation at http://www.fsf.org/ for more information.
All ideas are terrible,
but no idea is too terrible.
- Arcade
- Action
- Adventure
- Puzzle
- Simulation
- Strategy
- (many others)
- First-person Shooter
- Metroidvania
- Roguelike
- Roguelite
- Sandbox
- MMO
- Minecraft clone
- (way too many others)
- Create a "design wiki" before anything else.
- Prototype early.
- Change the design based on feedback from the prototype.
- Simple ideas are easy to prototype.
- Complex ideas take longer to prototype.
- You need a prototype as soon as possible.
- Pick your tech based on the designs
- Use an existing engine if possible
- Scripting should be relatively easy
- Engines do all the heavy lifting for you.
- Programmed with scripts.
- Frameworks give tools to write an engine.
- Programmed natively.
- Libraries are just lumps of code.
Frameworks and Engines are often collections of Libraries.
- GDevelop
- Construct Classic
- PyGame
- EaselJS
- Oxygine
- Duality
- Unreal Engine
- Source
- id Tech
- Unity3D
- ImpactJS
- GameMaker
Pick a framework, write your own, or just hack together some libraries.
C++ and Python are the only languages you need.
C#, Scheme, and Javascript are also nice.
Java considered harmful.
Mobile platforms will require specific tech.
- Allegro
- SDL
- SFML
- Cinder
- GamePlay
- pyglet
- LWJGL
- Bullet
- Box2D
- GLFW
- SoLoud
- Boost
- POCO
- Python
- PNG
- Ogg Vorbis
- FreeType
- stb
The stuff that gets blasted into the player's face.
- Prefer 3D if possible.
- 3D is easier to deal with in code.
- 2D mechanics do not imply 2D art.
- 2D art does not imply pixels.
Two options:
- Keyframes
- Usually better for 2D art.
- Skeleton
- Usually better for 3D art.
- Inkscape (scalable graphics editor)
- GIMP (image manipulation)
- Piskel (sprite animation)
- Blender (modelling, animation, video)
- Around 5-10% of people are colorblind.
- If your game makes mechanical use of color, consider adding a colorblind mode.
- Ogg Vorbis - Strong general-purpose format.
- FLAC - Lossless compression.
- WAV - No compression. Do not EVER use for music.
- MP3 - Never use this. Ogg Vorbis is much better.
- Audacity - Sound recording and editing.
- SFXR (and derivatives like BFXR) - Sound effect generation.
- Musagi - Music editor and synthesizer.
- MilkyTracker - Music tracker.
- LMMS - Music editor.
- Tiled - Map editor
- Tile Studio - Map and tile editor
The aesthetics of a game's graphics, music, and mechanics must be complementary.
- Character growth reflected in the interface.
- Bigger health bars
- More items
- Character actions tied to scene.
- Moving faster -> wide FOV
- Steady aiming -> narrow FOV
- Large impact (landing from a long fall)
- Screen shake
- Dust clouds
- thump
- Music changes when in combat.
- Story told through gameplay
- Gameplay driven by story
Ludonarrative dissonance
- Player actions lie outside the narrative.
- Story and gameplay are not working together.
- Avoid if possible.
- You cannot stop the player from acting like an idiot.
"It's an MMO space combat simulator with voxel terrain destruction and a player-driven economy."
- You don't need modding support.
- You don't need online multiplayer.
- You don't need hats.
Make the absolute bare minimum game you can.
Add to it later.