GameDev

Alternative title: Unity gives up

Do you see yourself going back to Unity after they changed streams? I do not.

cross-posted from: https://mastodon.social/users/Berin/statuses/113032571990580083

How to cross promote under the new Steam Rules by Chris Zukowski

https://howtomarketagame.com/2024/08/26/how-to-cross-promote-under-the-new-steam-rules/

@gamedev

#GameDev #GameMarketing #Steam #GamesMarketing #IndieDev

cross-posted from: https://mastodon.social/users/Berin/statuses/113018036706256668

Submissions for the 2025 Independent Games Festival are open until September 30!

https://igf.com/article/2025-independent-games-festival-submissions-are-now-open

#IndieDev #GameDev

@indiedev

cross-posted from: https://mastodon.social/users/Berin/statuses/112958975936924665

New Rules for Steam Store Page Descriptions

TLDR You may no longer add:
- Links to external sites (use dedicated fields instead)
- Links or images pointing to other games on Steam
- Images that mimic Steam UI elements

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/4201376568915048835

#Steam #GameDev #IndieDev #GameMarketing
@gamedev

*Edited for more clarity

cross-posted from: https://mastodon.social/users/Berin/statuses/112916519158308760

Draknek just announced their "New Voices Puzzle Grant" for 2024!

It's a USD$15,000 grant for developers from traditionally underrepresented groups who are working on puzzle games!
Includes 1-on-1 mentorship and super flexible terms when it comes to how the money is used.
Deadline is October 7th 2024.

More info in the link here: https://grants.draknek.org/

@gamedev

#GameDev #IndieDev #PuzzleGame

cross-posted from: https://mastodon.social/users/Berin/statuses/112909319251670592

The Melbourne Queer Games 2024 Festival is open for submissions until August 23, 2024

There are no geographical restrictions regarding the submissions. Queer games from all over the world are eligible, and entry is free!

http://mqgf.com.au

@gamedev

#QueerGames #IndieDev #GameDev

Had to share with this community, I decided for my second game to just rip off the band-aid and I entered a game jam targeted at beginners. I placed 3rd - with 1st and 2nd going to more seasoned game developers. I never imagined that, going in, I would be on the pedestal. I just have to thank everyone that participates in game development and indie gaming as a community - including you, reading this.

If you are curious and want to check it out:

The games ranked by overall score

The game itself

A devlog looking back at my first jam experience

For people who want to read instead of making coffee while listening (or more details), the actual release notes: https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-0-12/

This one goes out to the hobbyists and the solo devs, as I’d guess anyone employed in the industry is already using such basics.

But it does seem to be a particular problem among less experienced game developers, to avoid using version control (also known as source control) and risk losing progress if not their entire project.

Just in the last few weeks I’ve seen a video from a well-known indie dev admitting he got himself into a tangle through not using it, another one with a guy trying to make a game in a weekend only to have his files irretrievably corrupted on the last night. And endless Discord conversations in which someone has lost a significant amount of work and needs to be talked down from a ledge.

Plus it came up in the game jam advice thread, so it’s been on my mind and I thought it deserved its own post.

Why is this so prevalent in game dev? I have a few ideas, mostly around misunderstandings and perceived complexity. But it’s a bit heartbreaking to see people lose such huge chunks of work, not to mention demotivating for the person involved, so a PSA it is!

Why you should be using version control

• Backups - Each commit is an emergency backup of your code at a particular point in time. Hard drive fails? Well, luckily you’ve only lost the work done since you pushed the last commit. Note: I do recommend taking regular backups to store elsewhere and not relying on just this, but it’s a good start.
• Experimentation & rollback - You can feel free to try new things, break stuff, safe in the knowledge that if it all sets on fire you can just roll back to the last commit and pretend nothing happened.
• Teamwork - Sharing code and working together without overwriting stuff can be a bit of a nightmare. Version control helps to prevent issues and keep things running smoothly in a team situation.
• Branches - Maybe you’re working in a team and want to try adding a new feature without bothering anyone else. Or maybe you’re working solo but want to keep your wild experiments separate to your stable codebase. Either way, sorted.
• Paper trail - Ever discovered an obscure bug and wondered when it crept in and how (or maybe even whodunnit)? Now you can find out.
• Versioning - Clue’s in the name really, but once you start thinking about game releases and versions the ability to differentiate between stable release branch and work-in-progress branch is gonna come in clutch.
• And probably plenty other reasons that I can’t think of right now off the top of my head but hopefully you get the idea.

How to get started

There are two things you’ll need to start, the actual version control software and a place to host your project.

The most popular source control software is Git, and the most popular host is Github. Honestly you might as well learn these first because even if you decide to move to an alternative later, they’re massively popular in the industry and most teams and places of work will expect this knowledge anyway.

This post is long enough already without trying to add an actual tutorial in here but info on the exact process is easy enough to find. You’re smart, you’ll do fine.

You can interact with your project through the command line, but you can also install a more user-friendly GUI. The two most popular tend to be SourceTree and Github Desktop.

You can also find engine-specific help and .gitignore files etc online, so do make sure to search for those.

Before you start your next project. Before you work on that new feature for your work-in-progress game. Before you lose something you’d really rather not have lost. Please, please use version control.

End post.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1915905

OP posted their unpopular opinion that game devs shouldn't be using their development time on making games accessible for people with disabilities.

But check out the top comments, which have turned into basically a handy checklist of all the simple accessibility features we can easily add to our games!

Thanks, OP 😄

Sorry in advance

Since Lemmy is a terrible influence, I’ve been convinced to give RSS another go as a means to get at the ~~news that interests me~~ interesting stuff that I’d otherwise miss. It’s actually working surprisingly well, so I thought I’d share some gamedev-specific resources that I’ve subscribed to so far.

My current approach for the feed is to subscribe to basically anything that looks interesting, then prune it later if it turns out to be no good or be too spammy. So I’d very much appreciate suggestions of blogs, magazines, video channels, podcasts, whatever is RSS-able!

READING MATERIAL

Magazines

• MCV / Develop Magazine - News, interviews etc from around the UK gaming industry
• Game Developer (née Gamasutra) - Lots of interesting news and articles among the nonsense here but I can’t find a way to sub to only certain categories, so may be too spammy. We’ll see.

Blogs

• LOSTGARDEN - Self-described as “a rare treasure trove of readable, thoughtful essays on game design theory, art and the business of design” and it’s not wrong
• Keith Burgun Games - Basically a personal blog that includes devlog updates, general musings on gamedev, and a podcast
• Blobs in Games - Technical articles that mostly go over my head but are interesting to read through anyway to see what sort of thing actual smart people get up to
• Brandon Cole - Game reviews and other articles from the perspective of a blind gamer who works as an accessibility consultant. Really interesting read, and audio versions of posts are included.

WATCHING & LISTENING

Podcasts

I don’t really do podcasts but would like to get into them more, so any recommendations for this section very welcome!

• The Clockwork Game Design Podcast / Strategy Can Be Fun - By Keith Burgun who I mentioned above already, a combo of discussions and interviews around game design
• Building The Game - “the ins and outs and ups and downs of being game designers in a documentary style”
• Deep Listens - Subbed to this because it described itself as taking deeper dives into what makes games great, but haven’t listened yet so we’ll see
• The Game Dev Advice Podcast - Basically what it says on the tin

Videos

Did you know you can still subscribe to YouTube channels via RSS? This should help with the problem of YT trying to decide what we actually want to see, versus what we’ve literally told it we want to see. So far I’ve RSS-followed:

• GDC - An excellent resource that you all no doubt already know about
• Going Indie - Video essay type content on the business side of games, from a guy who started his own indie studio
• Ask Gamedev - Despite the name this is more of a showcase channel for indie / solo games, but it’s fun for a bit of occasional inspiration
• Grant Abbitt - Actually a 3d modelling channel focusing on Blender but the way he explains things has been invaluable for me and my game

Plus a couple of devlog channels by members of this community that I’d like to make sure I don’t miss:

• QueenOfSquiggles - Making a magical farming sim inspired by Slime Rancher (shoutout @QueenOfSquiggles@lemmy.one )
• JulianH - Making a story-based game about the very far future, with some definite Outer Wilds vibes (shoutout @julianh@lemm.ee )

If any of you reading this have your own devlog channel, please share, I’d love to check it out too!

—

For anyone thinking of joining the RSS revolution, I’m trying out Inoreader which I’d seen recommended a fair bit around Lemmy. Not too sold on it yet, but the free plan is a decent enough start.

interesting stuff that I’d otherwise miss

I didn't see IndieDev, which is a community I frequented a lot on reddit. Between this one and IndieDev, that's where I spent most of my time. I'm honestly not even sure what the distinction between the two is anymore.

I'm working on a game right now and I've added some post processing and I'm loving how it looks, but I'm realizing I don't know anything about it. What does your post processing stack look like? How does it fit into your game's overall art style? Would love some resources on post processing if anyone has them!

For me, I recently had to revamp something because I was taught to use PlayerPrefs for saving all game data and had to move everything to a JSON in order to make cloud saves work or even just transfering save files to other devices.

I've been going through a course on udemy and learning unreal engine first time ever consistently for the past month, but haven't finished a game just yet, and I don't think I care enough to put any effort on anything other than gamedev. It has been my passion since like 6 years, that's why I left my old job as an Ops engineer; should I continue and work on different projects simultaneously (opengl and unreal) or just stick to one. FYI, I'm not employed atm and would hope to work on gamedev professionally. I appreciate any advice to build my portfolio or any keypoints to get better at gamedev.

tl;dr would learning unreal and opengl simultaneously benefit me to get hired in a gamdev studio or should i stick to unreal and finish some games first?

Since it's Throwback Thursday and all (and since I'm waiting on a driver install and need something to do for about three minutes), I thought it might be fun to look back at our first ever games!

For me, other than working my way through the old Brackey's tutorial to make an endless ball-rolling game, the first one I ever made and completed was Good Luck With The Lamps, a very basic pixel art platformer where you're just a normal regular bear trying to turn all his lamps off and go to bed.

But the lamps have other ideas! spooky hand wave

This was for the "My First Game Jam" Summer 2020 edition which lasted about two weeks, if it'd been any less there's no way we could have finished. I say "we" because this was actually a joint effort between me and my SO, who afterwards vowed never to work with me again lol.

Things learned:

• If you're doing pixel art the pixels should probably all be the same size
• Unity's tilemap system
• Basic 2d animations
• How to make a cut scene
• I hate making platformers!

Ok, your turn!

Hey folks, I thought I'd share this game I recently finished. It's intended to be an example project for people learning godot.

Source on Github, and it's on the play store too.

Hi all,

I've decided to start a GameDev community as I didn't see any on this instance or others.

What's your relation with game development?

I'll start; I'm a hobby game developer at most, mainly having experience with MonoGame (based on XNA) but I switched to C# + SDL2 (using SDL2-CS). Currently writing my own semi-engineless game (I don't want to say that I'm building my own engine, but I do have some reusability for my own sake) while figuring out SDL2 and always looking for best practices.

I tried Unity, GoDot, Unreal Engine and more over the years, but as someone with a background in software development the freedom of the code-first approach always works better for me.

Welcome!