[GRdev] Hobbyist game development

Anything to do with games at all.
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smurphy
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by smurphy » Fri Jun 22, 2018 8:43 pm

It seems incredibly silly to be teaching TDD in a Unity tutorial that assumes no programming knowledge. It's invaluable in production code, but learning to program and to make games is difficult enough without that spanner in the works.

Testing strategy isn't something you come across much in indie game breakdowns and postmortems. Most indie teams and one man shows surely can't have the resources for a proper end-to-end shakedown by actual testers every time they do an update, yet at the same time I can't imagine them putting a high priority on setting up wide coverage automated testing. I suppose as an indie team you can be super reactive to the community finding bugs, but they must have something else in place.

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Starquake
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Starquake » Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:26 am

Got some multiplayer up and running for my new game. My lad and I played together which was great fun and very useful!

I’ve used unit tests for game dev in areas of importance e.g. making sure achievements don’t get broken. Indie game dev is quite a fluid process with lots of discovery which makes unit testing not a good fit for all areas.

@four5sixpixel making games...

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Hyper Sentinel

http://www.hueygames.com
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Lex-Man
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Lex-Man » Sat Jun 23, 2018 3:19 pm

I'm probably going to buy your game at the end of the month. Starquake.

Haven't had much time to do any dev stuff as my brothers been round all week. Probably work on some tonight.

Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work.
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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by OrangeRKN » Sat Jun 23, 2018 5:47 pm

Yesterday lunch a guy at work took me very quickly through changing scenes, using tilemaps and adding sprite animations in Unity, so I'm ready to jump in and truly mess things up now.

Might have to reinstall Unity though, for some reason the sln files for projects aren't being generated which means I'm getting no autocompletion in vis studio.

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Starquake
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Starquake » Sat Jun 23, 2018 6:10 pm

lex-man wrote:I'm probably going to buy your game at the end of the month. Starquake.

Haven't had much time to do any dev stuff as my brothers been round all week. Probably work on some tonight.


Oh, thank you! :wub:

There are some sales on at the moment so you should be able to grab it at a discount.

Hoping to have a physical release sometime later this year too. Not confirmed yet though.

@four5sixpixel making games...

Wreckout
Hyper Sentinel

http://www.hueygames.com
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False
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by False » Sat Jun 23, 2018 9:55 pm

I’ve coded a load of gooseberry fool in different disciplines -though these days I’m primarily just windows scripting stuff - and I dunno if it marks me out as a noob baby but I have always just tested each sector of code as I write it. Every new feature or iteration is tested as it’s written so I don’t have to troubleshoot afterwards.

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Starquake
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Starquake » Sun Jun 24, 2018 9:32 pm

Great session with Huey today. Getting feedback and changing some design based on it is essential early on. I find it’s best not to be too precious about ideas you have. Some work, some don’t - keep those that do, get rid of those that don’t and move on.

@four5sixpixel making games...

Wreckout
Hyper Sentinel

http://www.hueygames.com
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Lex-Man
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Lex-Man » Mon Jun 25, 2018 11:28 am

smurphy wrote:It seems incredibly silly to be teaching TDD in a Unity tutorial that assumes no programming knowledge. It's invaluable in production code, but learning to program and to make games is difficult enough without that spanner in the works.

Testing strategy isn't something you come across much in indie game breakdowns and postmortems. Most indie teams and one man shows surely can't have the resources for a proper end-to-end shakedown by actual testers every time they do an update, yet at the same time I can't imagine them putting a high priority on setting up wide coverage automated testing. I suppose as an indie team you can be super reactive to the community finding bugs, but they must have something else in place.


In fairness it's only used to test a scoring system for a bowling game.

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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by OrangeRKN » Mon Jun 25, 2018 11:33 am

Starquake wrote:Hoping to have a physical release sometime later this year too. Not confirmed yet though.


If this happens on Switch I will be there to double dip. I'm still jealous of that cassette/usb edition that jawa got!

False wrote:I’ve coded a load of gooseberry fool in different disciplines -though these days I’m primarily just windows scripting stuff - and I dunno if it marks me out as a noob baby but I have always just tested each sector of code as I write it. Every new feature or iteration is tested as it’s written so I don’t have to troubleshoot afterwards.


I think it really depends what you're testing, you've probably been perfectly fine testing things as you have. At work we have a divide (somewhat simplified) between unit tests, integration tests, load tests and full stack tests, but our product's scope and usage demands it.

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by That » Mon Jun 25, 2018 11:40 am

Starquake wrote:Getting feedback and changing some design based on it is essential early on. I find it’s best not to be too precious about ideas you have. Some work, some don’t - keep those that do, get rid of those that don’t and move on.

Definitely, this is really good advice for any project I think.

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Jenuall » Mon Jul 02, 2018 10:58 pm

Went through another few lectures in the Unity course tonight, it's really good stuff but the pace is still a tiny bit slow for my liking - I do tend to find I've done half of the "challenges" they set before they even get round to setting them!

I'm using the extra time to start making some more structured notes on my potential game ideas, trying to sketch out a basic gameplay loop that I can then aim to implement a basic version of for testing out soon and see how it feels...

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Starquake » Mon Jul 09, 2018 7:31 pm

Game demo done! It’ll be entering the Big Indie Pitch competition at the Develop Conf. tomorrow evening. It’s still very early to expect anything - the game doesn’t even have any sound yet!! But it’s up and running on Switch, just some joycons and a couple of players needed!

Taking time out to play some Wolf on Switch tonight.

@four5sixpixel making games...

Wreckout
Hyper Sentinel

http://www.hueygames.com
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Lex-Man
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Lex-Man » Mon Jul 09, 2018 9:20 pm

Jenuall wrote:Went through another few lectures in the Unity course tonight, it's really good stuff but the pace is still a tiny bit slow for my liking - I do tend to find I've done half of the "challenges" they set before they even get round to setting them!

I'm using the extra time to start making some more structured notes on my potential game ideas, trying to sketch out a basic gameplay loop that I can then aim to implement a basic version of for testing out soon and see how it feels...


The challenges do expand quite a lot as it goes on.

I've basically done nothing for a couple of weeks as I moved house and changed job. Getting back into it now though.

Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work.
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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by OrangeRKN » Sun Aug 05, 2018 4:45 pm

Been enjoying reading starquake's dev posts about Hyper Sentinel on the switch news channel - anyone else seen them?

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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Lex-Man » Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:07 pm

OrangeRakoon wrote:Been enjoying reading starquake's dev posts about Hyper Sentinel on the switch news channel - anyone else seen them?


No, although I'm interesting in seeing them do you have a link.

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OrangeRKN
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by OrangeRKN » Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:16 pm

lex-man wrote:
OrangeRakoon wrote:Been enjoying reading starquake's dev posts about Hyper Sentinel on the switch news channel - anyone else seen them?


No, although I'm interesting in seeing them do you have a link.


No idea if they are published anywhere online, I've been seeing them through my Switch as I follow the Hyper Sentinel news feed on it.

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Lex-Man
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Lex-Man » Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:00 pm

OrangeRakoon wrote:
lex-man wrote:
OrangeRakoon wrote:Been enjoying reading starquake's dev posts about Hyper Sentinel on the switch news channel - anyone else seen them?


No, although I'm interesting in seeing them do you have a link.


No idea if they are published anywhere online, I've been seeing them through my Switch as I follow the Hyper Sentinel news feed on it.


Maybe I'll check the steam news feed.

Just finished the bowling game on the course I'm following. The next section is pretty amazing, it's making an FPS game using prefabbed stuff and it's super simple. I think it's been the most enjoyable part of the course thus far.

Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work.
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Starquake
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Starquake » Thu Aug 09, 2018 6:24 pm

Somebody put the story parts together in one place. You can read the whole thing here:

http://shmupnews.blogspot.com/2018/08/t ... l.html?m=1

@four5sixpixel making games...

Wreckout
Hyper Sentinel

http://www.hueygames.com
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Starquake
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by Starquake » Thu Aug 09, 2018 6:27 pm

Not much to report on my new game right now, other than it is coming together well. :-)

@four5sixpixel making games...

Wreckout
Hyper Sentinel

http://www.hueygames.com
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PostRe: [GRdev] Hobbyist game development
by jawafour » Thu Aug 09, 2018 6:53 pm

Starquake wrote:Not much to report on my new game right now, other than it is coming together well. :-)

:toot: . Is your new game Hewson-related, 'Quake? I can't think if I've just imagined this or I read about it... but does the game include aspects of Quazatron and Paradroid? Or maybe you can't say?

Sorry, dude - that's a lot of supposition and questions!


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