Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[Twiglard]

When drawing a sprite animation of a character walking or running (such as in Fallout 1/2), how often does the character/entity change its actual position? Let's say the animation runs at 12 FPS but game manages to render and run physics up to the display's refresh rate, which is 60 FPS.

Are both approaches feasible? If not, which one works better? Does the Hobbit 48 FPS fiasco pertain to this?

--

Also, is it ever reasonable to move the character by a varying amount depending on which frame it is? Like, having the NPC accelerate and decelerate as part of the animation cycle.

 

[tritosine2k]

Also, is it ever reasonable to move the character by a varying amount depending on which frame it is? Like, having the NPC accelerate and decelerate as part of the animation cycle.

starcraft does this w. flying/hovering units, theres a site with code deep dive it has this snippet too ( I'd "borrow" much more than this)

for top down game you don't need to worry about >24frames because both low rate of change and fov.

48 is good for me in arpg, without the action part it's reasonable to think frame doubled 24 is more or less the same ( also on console they would piss themselves in joy for 48 because their 60 performance mode is too much fidelity loss).

 

[GoblinGrotto]

Worked some more on the hex level editor. Decided to try and do a squad tactics game with it. Started on some pathfinding stuff:

Also fixed the rendering so it only draws what is in view (before it always rendered everything), added auto tiling support in the editor (used for the pits and cliffs), and also added so you can flip decorations when placing them.

how far can you scale it out?

From the debug console how far out you want. From the editor itself 10% - 200%. Looks like shit since it's pixel art, but works okay for blocking out areas on larger maps.

how many hexes at 60fps

Dunno, haven't tested. The biggest map I've made so far is 100x100 and it runs without issues.

how do you do the scrollbar?

They take an max item count (if it's a list it would be how many items the list contains etc.) and a count on how many items it can display without having to scroll. Then it calculate the size of the bar from that. When scroll it returns an index offset of what item it is on. Whatever uses the scrollbar have to use that to correctly draw and update it's stuff.
Probably better ways to do it, but meh it works for what I'm using it for.

 

[Twiglard]

Fucking hell. Don't make my mistake and don't use nanoseconds for Δt.

• they need 64 bits of precision
• they overflow easily
  • can't even use 32-bit floats for dealing with the update(dt)'s nanosecond value!
  • can't even multiply a time delta by itself in some intermediate calculation
  • must use uint64_t
    • I'm a 32-bit CPU-phobe shitlord now (umm sweaty why not just use softfloats for 32-bit builds :soy:
    • so easy to overflow and overflow isn't defined for signed values!
    • bigger and higher alignment
  • slower than 32-bit arithmetic

I'm actually still using them and won't switch to microseconds.

Also, a question: how'd you emulate a CPU with the correct speed? Best if not in a VM (GPU requirement).

---

Finally, the character is able to walk with the same speed regardless of whether the game runs at 60 or 1000 FPS. It was horrible, particularly the bit about using deterministic fixed-point arithmetic representible in the save file.

--

I wrote a test suite for batch testing movement speed and collision programmatically. That way I'll know almost immediately if there are any regressions in the code. Hopefully.

 

[what am i doing]

Gradually chipping away at defining operations and products. Now focusing on defining population needs, which I'm probably going to handle in a manner broadly similar to Victoria 3's system (basically, there are several wealth brackets that populations fall under, and they can shift up or down depending on whether they have enough income to afford their current bracket; there are also several needs categories which have a bundle of products that can be used to fulfill their needs, and each wealth bracket has a set of these categories).
I also finished integrating the Cereal library and getting basic campaign creation/saving/loading implemented properly.
I was stalled for quite a while but the past few days I made decent headway. I'm still not sure how long it's going to take until I can start running basic economy tests. Every time I add something, another thing comes up that I hadn't considered, and every goddamn thing also requires matching UI/editor code.
I'm actually not enjoying this and haven't been for a very long time now.

 

[JoacoN]

So I recently did a couple updates for an arcade game i've been working on called Wicked Dance Fighting, here's a quick description and features:

Description:
Frantic arcade action, Wicked Dance Fighting is all about showing off your wicked dance moves by fighting enemies while you gracefully dodge their attacks, but beware, every missed swing means one piece of your health is lost, but incase you are victorious you will get double of what you would lose.

Are you up for the challenge?

Features:​

- 4 gamemodes!
+ Normal, perfect for learning how to play the game and test out strategies.
+ Hard, the real challenge.
+ Blackout, where did the lights go?
+ Shield, fight enemies by chaining together the Shield item.

- Coop Mode!
+ Play Normal and Hard modes with a friend! Enemies will focus player 1 but player will still need to beware to not be damaged by the horde following them.

- Many enemies!
+ Black enemies chase you around at normal speed.
+ Red enemies sprint towards you.
+ Yellow enemies charge horizontally towards you extremely fast, but will be a lot slower when moving vertically.
+ Blue enemies circle strafe around you.
+ Pinks run away from you but they offer a huge points bonus.
+ Violet enemies charge vertically towards you extremely fast, but will be a lot slower when moving vertically. In Hard mode they give double the points.
+ White enemies (Blackout) are visible outside of your flashlight, but will be hard to detect when they are inside it's range.
+ Rainbow enemies (Blackout) constantly shift color and circle strafe really fast to confuse you.

- Points challenge!
+ Everytime you hit a points goalpost you will get a new message! This is purely cosmetic but adds an extra reason to replay the game to get a better high score and see all the secret messages!

- 5 items!
+ Medkits, these patch you up to full health.
+ Speed Bonus, increase your speed.
+ Shield, become invincible for a couple seconds and create terror over your enemies.
+ Red Sword (Normal Mode), get a secondary smaller sword that let's you got hit behind your back.
+ Orange Sword (Hard Mode), extend your sword's reach by 50%.

- Low file size!
+ Less than 50mb, or play it online!

- Controls
+ Player 1: WASD to move, hit using E, R, Spacebar, or Left click.
+ Player 2: Arrow Keys to move, hit using Enter, NumPad0, NumPad4, or Right click.

Created by Joaquín Álvarez (JoacoN)
Music by Elsnou

If anyone wants to check it out here's the link (I recommend downloading it): https://joacon.itch.io/wicked-dance-fighting

And here's a couple screenshots:

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

So I recently did a couple updates for an arcade game i've been working on called Wicked Dance Fighting, here's a quick description and features:

Description:
Frantic arcade action, Wicked Dance Fighting is all about showing off your wicked dance moves by fighting enemies while you gracefully dodge their attacks, but beware, every missed swing means one piece of your health is lost, but incase you are victorious you will get double of what you would lose.

Are you up for the challenge?

Features:​

- 4 gamemodes!
+ Normal, perfect for learning how to play the game and test out strategies.
+ Hard, the real challenge.
+ Blackout, where did the lights go?
+ Shield, fight enemies by chaining together the Shield item.

- Coop Mode!
+ Play Normal and Hard modes with a friend! Enemies will focus player 1 but player will still need to beware to not be damaged by the horde following them.

- Many enemies!
+ Black enemies chase you around at normal speed.
+ Red enemies sprint towards you.
+ Yellow enemies charge horizontally towards you extremely fast, but will be a lot slower when moving vertically.
+ Blue enemies circle strafe around you.
+ Pinks run away from you but they offer a huge points bonus.
+ Violet enemies charge vertically towards you extremely fast, but will be a lot slower when moving vertically. In Hard mode they give double the points.
+ White enemies (Blackout) are visible outside of your flashlight, but will be hard to detect when they are inside it's range.
+ Rainbow enemies (Blackout) constantly shift color and circle strafe really fast to confuse you.

- Points challenge!
+ Everytime you hit a points goalpost you will get a new message! This is purely cosmetic but adds an extra reason to replay the game to get a better high score and see all the secret messages!

- 5 items!
+ Medkits, these patch you up to full health.
+ Speed Bonus, increase your speed.
+ Shield, become invincible for a couple seconds and create terror over your enemies.
+ Red Sword (Normal Mode), get a secondary smaller sword that let's you got hit behind your back.
+ Orange Sword (Hard Mode), extend your sword's reach by 50%.

- Low file size!
+ Less than 50mb, or play it online!

- Controls
+ Player 1: WASD to move, hit using E, R, Spacebar, or Left click.
+ Player 2: Arrow Keys to move, hit using Enter, NumPad0, NumPad4, or Right click.

Created by Joaquín Álvarez (JoacoN)
Music by Elsnou

If anyone wants to check it out here's the link (I recommend downloading it): https://joacon.itch.io/wicked-dance-fighting

And here's a couple screenshots:

UE5?

 

[JoacoN]

Oh no godot 3, UE5 would be overkill for any arcade game lol, it's extremely lightweight, 10mb of space (most of it being the music) and 5mb of VRAM to run only the game, but godot adds up some extra requirements (game goes from 10mb to almost 50mb and the VRAM goes to around 80-120mb)

EDIT: just checked and all the scenes + assets minus music and sound are just 2,1mb. If I didn't want to support HD widescreen I could get it down to just a couple kb.

 

[baboogy]

As someone who isn't an expert in the slightest on rendering, and this feels like a stupid question, still have a lot to learn there- what exactly plays into the difference between the distinctive look of a 3D environment rendered as a 2D environment versus a 3D one?

You can almost always tell the two approaches of rendering apart. I know it's not just the textures, because they wouldn't look quite right when rendered in 3D mode. Is it the lighting? Perspective? Is it possible to recreate a style like this in 3D and still have it look nice? Or are you better off rendering in 2D to begin with if you want to achieve this look?

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

As someone who isn't an expert in the slightest on rendering, and this feels like a stupid question, still have a lot to learn there- what exactly plays into the difference between the distinctive look of a 3D environment rendered as a 2D environment versus a 3D one?

You can almost always tell the two approaches of rendering apart. I know it's not just the textures, because they wouldn't look quite right when rendered in 3D mode. Is it the lighting? Perspective? Is it possible to recreate a style like this in 3D and still have it look nice? Or are you better off rendering in 2D to begin with if you want to achieve this look?

Not sure what the question is. What do you mean by rendering?
But I would say the above is mostly hand drawn, the lower is possibly a combination of 3d render plus hand drawn sprite.

 

[baboogy]

As someone who isn't an expert in the slightest on rendering, and this feels like a stupid question, still have a lot to learn there- what exactly plays into the difference between the distinctive look of a 3D environment rendered as a 2D environment versus a 3D one?
You can almost always tell the two approaches of rendering apart. I know it's not just the textures, because they wouldn't look quite right when rendered in 3D mode. Is it the lighting? Perspective? Is it possible to recreate a style like this in 3D and still have it look nice? Or are you better off rendering in 2D to begin with if you want to achieve this look?

Not sure what the question is. What do you mean by rendering?
But I would say the above is mostly hand drawn, the lower is possibly a combination of 3d render plus hand drawn sprite.

Sorry, I can't quite find the words to describe what I mean coherently, I guess in this case I mean software vs hardware rendering. If you render two identical scenes, with the same textures and layouts, one in raycasting through software (ala wolf3d) and one in hardware with openGL but no lighting and fullbright, they will not look similar at all, even though in theory they should. A good example of this is doom/wolf3d sourceports, if you look side by side at the ones rendered with the original engine vs opengl trying to maintain backwards compatibility you can clearly tell that the opengl one was rendered in hardware.

I've been practicing pixel art, and want to do a similar style to wiz7 but with a higher resolution. But I'm doing rendering in opengl, and playing around with it I'm not quite happy with how it looks. Here's an example with some spritework I did, as rendered ingame- it doesn't quite "look" right to me, and I'm wondering at this point if I should drop learning opengl to maybe try to learn how older games did software rendering.

 

[tritosine2k]

...

...

...

it's because perspective projection, the 3d is example is already semi-realistic projection vs the 2d, then if that's realistic you'd want that early 3d stuff like bump maps, anisotropic filtering etc. to look remotely correct. With 2d you can have just have some wildy out of whack projection it doesn't do that (with orthographic sprites on top of it).

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

As someone who isn't an expert in the slightest on rendering, and this feels like a stupid question, still have a lot to learn there- what exactly plays into the difference between the distinctive look of a 3D environment rendered as a 2D environment versus a 3D one?
You can almost always tell the two approaches of rendering apart. I know it's not just the textures, because they wouldn't look quite right when rendered in 3D mode. Is it the lighting? Perspective? Is it possible to recreate a style like this in 3D and still have it look nice? Or are you better off rendering in 2D to begin with if you want to achieve this look?

Not sure what the question is. What do you mean by rendering?
But I would say the above is mostly hand drawn, the lower is possibly a combination of 3d render plus hand drawn sprite.

Sorry, I can't quite find the words to describe what I mean coherently, I guess in this case I mean software vs hardware rendering. If you render two identical scenes, with the same textures and layouts, one in raycasting through software (ala wolf3d) and one in hardware with openGL but no lighting and fullbright, they will not look similar at all, even though in theory they should. A good example of this is doom/wolf3d sourceports, if you look side by side at the ones rendered with the original engine vs opengl trying to maintain backwards compatibility you can clearly tell that the opengl one was rendered in hardware.

I've been practicing pixel art, and want to do a similar style to wiz7 but with a higher resolution. But I'm doing rendering in opengl, and playing around with it I'm not quite happy with how it looks. Here's an example with some spritework I did, as rendered ingame- it doesn't quite "look" right to me, and I'm wondering at this point if I should drop learning opengl to maybe try to learn how older games did software rendering.

Ah right. I think what you want to write your own lighting, materials pipeline. The modern OGL programmable pipeline theres a lighting shader, you want to swap that out for something that works with the distance a little differently. Like a more ambient kind of light.

 

[tritosine2k]

works with the distance a little differently

if he goes correct perspective all the way ortho-sprite won't look correct at distance either, it's some 30-40x as much work. And even after 30-40x work ask yourself if you even want another 3d dungeon crawl or rather exterior with weather + cloud shadows. (Not to mention high performance interior shadows are ALREADY prettyyyy advanced topic vs. usual gamedev discussion )

 

[baboogy]

I see, thanks guys. For now I'll continue on working on the game logic itself and making sure it's as detached from the rendering as possible, in case I decide to rewrite to software rendering at some point. I'm not sure either that just changing up lighting would be enough, like tritosine2k mentioned the perspective will still not be quite right.

 

[Bad Sector]

I've been practicing pixel art, and want to do a similar style to wiz7 but with a higher resolution.

Note that Wizardry 7 does not do any form of real 3D rendering, it is all 2D sprites. Check the example images of this tool to get an idea of how it works: the final view is just a bunch of pre-drawn images pasted on top of each other (the Wiz7 artists drew these images).

That said you can get some similar look using 3D rendering but the more "authentic" you want the look to be, the more you'll need to twist a 3D graphics API - and you'll also need art assets for it. For example you can have a pixelart texture combined with a parallax map to create indents/crevices/etc and let the surrounding lighting affect them. Often the wall art in these games had lines (e.g. the cracks between rocks) of a uniform width but on a texture the lines would become thinner as the distance increases - if you want to emulate this aspect you may need to use geometry for the walls with some shader that keeps the screen space thickness constant.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

I've come to the realization that the demand for success this industry puts us under just isn't worthwhile.
I take inspiration from games like Noctis, I would rather become something esoteric. I think I solved one of the biggest issues with trying to be an indie and be an entrepreneur, simple: Don't!
My job right now pays 2x the games industry average, suffice to say I won that battle. I no longer put the pressure and emphasis that game development is essential for survival and it was stupid of me to even think that way but at the time at least it was the only option till covid fucked everything for me, so I did the right thing, bailed out my mother, we kept the house but I lost my dream. Worth it would do it again.

What have I been working on. Well I have a functioning building editor that will likely be turned into a city builder. It'd just be a lot of fun to do what I did last time when Sim City came out where I basically made a "spite" game except this time it'd be Cities Skylines. The reason I want to do this is because it will help with the ImSim that I've been trying to get off the ground - it needed buildings which we can do now, but placing the buildings in Tiles was a logical step - I'm going to be doing it anyway might as well turn that into its own game too and I've already done it before but because it was a student project we had to abandon it. So that's what I've been working on.

The ImSims been stuck because of the animation pipeline, I should have it resolved by the end of the year. Before moving away from Unity to Godot this is what the game looked like - I feel a bit more comfortable showing stuff now, (note the MakeHuman mesh was placeholder I had a squirrel there but the clothes sucked). The dialogue system was hilarious, 1:1 worked like Deus Ex's except from first person. The guns were also placeholder.

I also briefly built a space prototype game in a few weeks that resembled Starfleet Command, it was feature complete but lacks the art, so I'm probably going to also have to build a damn tool for that now lol. You know that saying "Don't make tools make games" that I quoted a while back, I rescind it, truthfully who the fuck cares as long as you're enjoying the process, I don't care about the financial incentive or glory of it anymore. I'm too old for this shit lol. I just game dev now to relax, its a lot more enjoyable than playing the worthless excuses people call video games lately.

Real reason for the post, I wanted to thank you all in this thread for inspiring me. Sometimes the state of the industry upsets me, so when I see all the amazing stuff you're all working on it makes me feel a lot better and makes me want to work on things.

 

[baboogy]

I've been practicing pixel art, and want to do a similar style to wiz7 but with a higher resolution.

Note that Wizardry 7 does not do any form of real 3D rendering, it is all 2D sprites. Check the example images of this tool to get an idea of how it works: the final view is just a bunch of pre-drawn images pasted on top of each other (the Wiz7 artists drew these images).

That said you can get some similar look using 3D rendering but the more "authentic" you want the look to be, the more you'll need to twist a 3D graphics API - and you'll also need art assets for it. For example you can have a pixelart texture combined with a parallax map to create indents/crevices/etc and let the surrounding lighting affect them. Often the wall art in these games had lines (e.g. the cracks between rocks) of a uniform width but on a texture the lines would become thinner as the distance increases - if you want to emulate this aspect you may need to use geometry for the walls with some shader that keeps the screen space thickness constant.

I've actually tried this tool before but was not happy with the results, because I couldn't wrangle a good way to produce simple walls (not 4 sided blocks) with it. And there's always the issue of giving up a lot of convenience with rendering in 3D with opengl or the like that I take for granted now, like very easy depth resolution, fluid camera while turning/moving, etc.

I suppose I will have to give it some thought, the idea of making something visually authentic (though at a higher resolution) is appealing, but there was some real wizardry going on with the programmers smart enough to implement all of this back then, think it may be biting off more than I can chew if I throw in the idea of doing it all in software on top of writing the game and engine.

 

[Bester]

As someone who isn't an expert in the slightest on rendering, and this feels like a stupid question, still have a lot to learn there- what exactly plays into the difference between the distinctive look of a 3D environment rendered as a 2D environment versus a 3D one?

You can almost always tell the two approaches of rendering apart. I know it's not just the textures, because they wouldn't look quite right when rendered in 3D mode. Is it the lighting? Perspective? Is it possible to recreate a style like this in 3D and still have it look nice? Or are you better off rendering in 2D to begin with if you want to achieve this look?

I have no idea what you mean, but if you mean perspective, here's a nice doc explaining perspective in true 2d isometric games and a bunch of other stuff https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lZITNMtdweTqOg2BND14OEcGDkHfV4VU_F9xkD15d5w/edit
How to imitate it in 3d is obvious once you know what to look out for.
It's in Russian, so run the document through google translate.

 

[CryptRat]

It's not always easy to know whether you're going to use a tool or not before you've actually made it. It's very personal. For example you can be pretty confident in using a simple map editor but that's a lame example.

I fully made From a Lost Tunnel using only my not-The-Bard's-Tale-construction-set, I did no coding expect for some bug fixing.

Now the problem is that the interesting parts of your game will be the one-off parts, status changes with a unique behaviour, enemies with a unique behaviour, not just a different number or a different equipment, unique weapons, unique events and navigation puzzles, as far as I'm concerned that's pure coding/scripting and having all these things doable in an editor is basically irrelevant, I think it's not worth the hassle myself but even if I did not it's still irrelevant at best. Status changes are the best example in my own code, the set of status changes is one of the rare broad and specific things I fully hardcoded (getting the numbers out of the code could be worth it, the names you can already change), because they should all work differently, if several of them just consist in dealing damage on a regular basis then it's a super poor set. There's no way I would make something like Note Of The Outskirts using only an editor, and people actually complained that you could not make The Bard's Tale using the official Bard's Tale Construction set (which is still far more advanced than mine, mine don't have any scripting) so that I'm a terrible coder is not the single only reason.

In practice my very base map editor is the only thing I use when working on something a little bigger, making From a Lost Tunnel with an editor did not convinced me it was worth using more for me.

My 2cents.

 

[Grauken]

As someone who isn't an expert in the slightest on rendering, and this feels like a stupid question, still have a lot to learn there- what exactly plays into the difference between the distinctive look of a 3D environment rendered as a 2D environment versus a 3D one?

You can almost always tell the two approaches of rendering apart. I know it's not just the textures, because they wouldn't look quite right when rendered in 3D mode. Is it the lighting? Perspective? Is it possible to recreate a style like this in 3D and still have it look nice? Or are you better off rendering in 2D to begin with if you want to achieve this look?

For me the difference between those two is mainly art direction, Wiz 7 has a consistent art direction across enemy sprites to wall sprites, it looks very cohesive.

Wizardry Five Ordeals has high-quality but drawn enemy sprites while the walls look like high-resolution rendered walls that don't look drawn at all or in the same style as the sprites, which leads to the effect that modern (often Japanese) crawlers have impressive enemy sprites against utterly generic looking backgrounds. One problem is the high fidelity, Wizardry Gaiden Dimguil on one of the PlayStation stations looks still better because its walls were made in a lower resolution early 3d style that fits far better with drawn enemy sprites.

Something else to consider is the way older sprite-based crawlers like Wiz7 create their 3d views, closer parts of the screen can overlay parts of the screen that are further away with wall sprites (the trees for example) drawn in such a way that these overlays are intentional, creating a more cohesive view. Modern 3d-based crawlers have a more boxy feeling because there are none of those overlays.

 

[tritosine2k]

As someone who isn't an expert in the slightest on rendering, and this feels like a stupid question, still have a lot to learn there- what exactly plays into the difference between the distinctive look of a 3D environment rendered as a 2D environment versus a 3D one?


You can almost always tell the two approaches of rendering apart. I know it's not just the textures, because they wouldn't look quite right when rendered in 3D mode. Is it the lighting? Perspective? Is it possible to recreate a style like this in 3D and still have it look nice? Or are you better off rendering in 2D to begin with if you want to achieve this look?

(...) (often Japanese) crawlers have impressive enemy sprites against utterly generic looking backgrounds. (...)

this makes said crawlers niche because you have to adapt to this to ignore it ( suspension of disbelief).
That's why 2D works here bc. if the projection is wholly out of whack it works better in terms of suspension of disbelief.

Once I saw a promising early mobile game I can't find anymore, was a boardgame FIGURINE crawler that's also an alternative albeit less explored (lends itself to cards and you should make 2.5D map anyway even in perspective crawler ) and many bad examples. Then IMO a bad example held back by 3d + point light shadows plus completely f*cked by realistic perspective :

(if this is your idea of 3d, just don't )

 

[Grauken]

this makes said crawlers niche because you have to adapt to this to ignore it ( suspension of disbelief).

Though it doesn't have to be like this, our own zz's Demon Lord Reincarnation has only one wall set and has a 3d engine in the background, but it still looks moody as hell and very good. It's really not a question of technology and more of art direction and the willingsness to make it look good.

 

[Bad Sector]

I've actually tried this tool before but was not happy with the results

Note that i linked to the tool because it has an image showing the individual sprites that make up the viewport, not to recommend it.

 

[baboogy]

Something else to consider is the way older sprite-based crawlers like Wiz7 create their 3d views, closer parts of the screen can overlay parts of the screen that are further away with wall sprites (the trees for example) drawn in such a way that these overlays are intentional, creating a more cohesive view. Modern 3d-based crawlers have a more boxy feeling because there are none of those overlays.

That's an interesting point, but nothing really keeps you from doing this in a 3d crawler, does it? Legend of Grimrock games do something similar with 3d objects.

I've actually tried this tool before but was not happy with the results

Note that i linked to the tool because it has an image showing the individual sprites that make up the viewport, not to recommend it.

Got it, that's my misunderstanding.