Game Development

I'm currently developing a short indie horror game for itch.io. I went to school for 3D animation and I'm fully capable at modeling, animation and all that. But I'm incompetent when it comes to programming. I tried Sololearn to see if I could learn c sharp, but I barely made it past the intro section. I also bought playmaker and Emerald AI hoping that would make it easier. But the documentation for playmaker is either limited or outdated. Emerald AI I do have a grasp on though. I wanted to code it myself, but based on my struggles, it seemed more and more likely that I'd have to get outside help.

I'd like to work on indie games with other people, but I've learned no one wants to take you on unless you can prove your skills in an already existing game. Which is a big reason for why I want this game made. I've signed on for many game jams only for my teams to flake out every time. I've met multiple coders on discord who were willing to help on my game in exchange for assets, who then ghosted me. I don't have much money these days, so hiring is both unrealistic and excessive for a game that I need for portfolio reasons (wish I had spent that playmaker money on this instead.)

The game itself isn't very complicated: player needs to flip four switches to unlock an escape door while avoiding patrolling enemies. So I don't think these coders were turned off by the offer, especially when I was willing to make all the assets for an open world game.

At this point, I just want to have a completed game. I loathe the idea of resorting to AI (especially as an artist) but if I can't find any other options, I may just have to go with it. I'd really rather it doesn't come to that, so I need advice.

How should I proceed from here? Would it be unethical to use AI to just do the coding and correct it here and there with what little coding knowledge I have? What should I do to get this game done?

Edit/PS: I could spend the years it would take for me to learn coding, but that's not my end goal. I want to be a game artist and learning to code seems like it would be a distraction from that. Is it wrong to think that way?

VCMI / HoMM3

OpenGothic / Gothic 1 and Gothic 2

OpenWM / Morrowind

OpenMohaa / Medal of Honor

Also Quake 1,2,3 and probably some more.

Saw this today and thought it was interesting.

Most surprising was ESRB claiming 78% of parents regularly use ESRB ratings and 86% use parental controls on their kid's console.

Maybe it's just that parents have gotten more technical and aware of bad content but it felt like every single child was playing mature games like GTA V back in the early 2010s. Nobody cared what kids were playing.

Another shocking stat was Dragon Ball Sparking Zero being the #5 top grossing PC/Console game in 2024. I know that series is popular but... How? There's been very little buzz around it.

Hey devs! Yesterday’s update brought pure chaos to the bunker:

Invading Monsters: Blat Choices may now invade your bunker… well, they could. RIP Batcroc Fly, gone forever thanks to an unexpected coding funeral 🪦🐊🦇

3 New Creatures: fresh nightmares to ruin your day.

Expedition Boat: now upgraded! More loot, more danger, still not cruise ship material 🛶

Shop 2.0: shinier, with more useful descriptions, and still designed to drain your gold 💸

Loot Areas: now drop money, food, and random junk. Basically a chaotic slot machine 🎰

Increased Difficulty: because suffering = content 💀

Stickman Upgrades: now with fancy colors so you can die in style 🌈

Audio Glow-Up: new sounds and music for maximum emotional damage 🎶

Visual Chaos: colorful texts, new backgrounds, extra unnecessary effects ✨

Bug Fixes: fewer bugs in the code, more bugs in the bunker

This update is packed with chaos, challenges, and laughs. Check it out and leave your thoughts, feedback, or survival stories on the game page! Every comment helps shape the next update.

👉 Play and comment here: https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game`___`

I really want to be able to mod the subtitles in ghost of Tsushima, but as far as I can tell there are absolutely no Modding tools capable of this.

But I did manage to extract some of the files and found the subtitles I wanted to edit.

So my goal was to add german subtitles with the English ones and package them and put them back together.

This was my work around to having two sets of subtitles together on the screen at the same time. All I would need to do is edit the subtitle file and place the german subs.

But the subtitles are stored in .xpps format. And I could not find anyway online to extract it and package it.

Any suggestions?

Hello,

I have been working on a game on and off. It's finally starting to shape up into something fun to play!

The game play is the old flash game 'Age of War' mixed with some Civilization inspired management. So far you can buy units and buildings, upgrade technologies, and fight a never ending onslaught of enemies.

My next plans are to implement a relics system, and starting to expand on traits.

I am making a game similar to something like HOI4 with the differentiating factor being that it is situated during the Cold War, with power dynamics of both the Americans and Soviets vying for dominance while the non-aligned movement tries to balance on the fence between the two superpowers.

Unlike HOI4, there will be turn-based battles (kind of like in Pokémon, but without the catching part) rather than manoeuvring troops around a front. This means that my game will be decently different from all the Cold War hoi4 mods, have okayish controller support, and will also be much easier to program.

Currently, I'm planning to add three different navigable tabs: a political tab (where you can complete focuses relating to your politics, get advisors, see all your subjects, etc.), an industry tab (production/factories, trade, economic advisors, etc.), and a military tab (researching weapons, head of the army, etc.). There will also be a clock (similar to something like HOI4).

I'm thinking the political tab should mainly just be the focuses (see focus trees in HOI4) and advisors that give you modifiers like stability buffs and ideology support.

My questions are, what should I add to this game? What modifiers/stats should I add (something akin to stability, war support, etc.)? How should focuses work? What colour should all the territories be? What about the releasables (see African colonies, post-Soviet states, etc.)? How should modifiers like stability and war support and things like how much equipment you have in stock affect the turn-based battles?

Note that this game isn't meant to be realistic whatsoever, and I've already planned out a few focus paths (many of which are very out there...) for some of the major countries (subject to change, of course):

• West and East Germany: Race to unify the country under their leadership
  • unified Germany (western bloc): democracy vs Kaiser vs cars over politics (German car company coup)
  • unified Germany (eastern bloc): align with the Soviets vs independent foreign policy vs NEW POLAND (due to proximity with old Poland. As you can see, not being very realistic. Like at all.)
• UK: Holding on to the empire vs independence
• United States: Democracy vs military dictatorship vs capitalism over politics (a company takes over the government in a coup)
• Soviet Union: Towards de-Stalinization vs supporting Stalin's ideas, possible anarchist path?
• Yugoslavia: formation of the non-aligned movement, communism vs democracy vs monarchism vs sports over politics (coup by sports team or something? Not sure)

What other paths should I add? What should I change about these paths? What kind of modifiers/boost/war goals/etc should the focuses give you?

It has:

chaos ✅

doodles ✅

monsters ✅

a random chicken in the corner ✅

Now the real question is… does it look like something you’d actually click on, or like a cave drawing made during a coffee overdose? 😂

Would love some feedback from you folks – roast it, praise it, or just tell me if the chicken deserves more spotlight. 🐔

👉 Game link (if you’re curious): https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game

Hey everyone! I’m Daniel (14yo indie dev) and I’ve been working on my chaotic card-survival game A Survival Game.

I just released a big update and I’d love to see how people actually play it. If you enjoy trying out indie games, it would mean the world to me if you could:

Record a short video / gameplay session.

Share your first impressions, reactions, or even funny fails.

It doesn’t need to be professional – even a quick screen capture helps me understand how players interact with the chaos I built.

You can play it here: https://danielgamedev14.itch.io/a-survival-game

Thanks a lot! Every video helps me improve the game and spread it to more players 🙏

Come join us for the Spooktober N64 Stype Graphics Jam #4! Make some cool retro games and have some fun with us! There's a 50 dollar cash prize!

Over the years, our server has been racking up costs, and the now-unsupported software it was running on finally gave out.

All online services have now been migrated into permanent offline features. We made sure nothing was lost.

• The Level Editor now saves levels directly to your disk […]
• All community-created levels […]
• All-time high scores have been immortalized […]
• New high scores are saved locally […]

The game Dual Snake on Steam is free and was released in 2018.

Hey folks, I just pushed a new update for my little chaotic project A Survival Game (a survival card game with clueless stickmen). This time I focused on pacing and new systems:

Shorter Map → players were walking too long before hitting events. Now chaos kicks in faster.

Expedition Boat 🚤 → new system to send stickmen away for loot (high risk, sometimes no return).

Radio 📡 → call for resources (or just static). Simple mechanic but adds a nice “desperate communication” flavor.

+4 Stickmen → bringing the total of new recruits to 8 since last updates.

Shop Upgrade 🛒 → cards finally have descriptions, because apparently stickmen can read.

Visual polish ✨ → more effects, outlined texts, flashy cards.

Better Save System 💾 → now more reliable across HTML5, mobile, and desktop builds.

On top of that, I experimented with monetization:

PRO Mode DLC ($2.50) → lets players customize runs (extra cash, days, stick levels). Basically legal cheating.

Mercy DLC ($1) → adds 4 cards including one that lets you roll back to your last save after a bad decision.

Dev thoughts

The biggest design call was shortening the map. Initially I wanted long runs for tension, but players got stuck in “walking simulator” mode. Compressing it made the game more chaotic and fun — curious to see if players miss the old pacing.

Also, adding the radio was fun because it’s a very simple UI change, but thematically it feels huge (players love pressing buttons that might do something).

Questions for you

Have you ever shortened a game/map for pacing reasons? Did it improve retention or just upset players?

Any tips on balancing optional DLC in a small indie project without making the base game feel lacking?

👉 If you want to check out the game: A Survival Game on Itch.io

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35297209

I'm looking for an engine/framework to make a 2d "RPG" (no leveling, etc, akin to Link to the Past).

I actually went to University for games programming, so I understand how games work, how to code them, etc etc. I work as a Test Automation programmer for websites, and I am doing some development on JS as well on a music toy. I am experienced with C#, C++, Java and JS.

The problem I've had in the past is that the frameworks promise the world, but everything I want to start working on is hidden beneath folders and folders of stuff, and the entry point to customize the correct parts seems obscured. Or, working on OpenGL etc are too basic with basically nothing out of the box.

I just want something that will say : here's your main, here's your player character, we've taken care of the collision detection and inputs and rendering, there's no gravity. Paint the tiles on this screen, and get going.

Like the level of expertise, customisation and entry point needs to be clear (or at least there is a guide to get started that I don't have to spend hours and hours on) and the business side is cut and dry and won't cost me to start deveoping. (flat X% after $Y in sales)

I don't mind having to learn a new scripting language as long as it's not drastically different to the object oriented languages I know already. (ie : nothing in Lisp)

After my previous post on this community, i read all comments and found lots of useful materials on gamedev.

For the firts couple of weeks i was completely involved into gamedev, learning, reading documetation, making project for hours every day. Next week i started to get bored with it. I was still making progress, but i just wasnt involved in it enough. Next week i got completely bored with it, and just left it. I tried to get back on track a couple weeks later, but wasnt successful.

I just cant find myself doing some work, like learning something new, for longer than two weeks. When i was younger, i tried to self learn programming, but couldnt to continue to learn for long. Now i know how to program, not because i personally was interested in it, but because i was taught it. Even if i will somehow learn to develop games, i dont think i will be able to work on same project for months or even years, which is always required to make good games.

Earlier i mentioned that i was bored, which is not what it seems it is. Making games is fun, and i want to do it. I just have a weird feeling, which i cant really explain what it feels like, and it prevents me from just opening the editor and continuing to work on a project i was doing last day, for unkown to me reason. Every time i boot my pc, i just look at that icon on the taskbar for a solid two minutes, until i decide to do nothing. Same thing at the next day, and a day after that, and then i just forgot i was actully doing that. I dont know why, but two weeks seems like the maximum i can spend on any big project, even if i am interested in it, and i know i have enough skill and time to complete it in reasonable amount of time.

So, what can you recommend me to do, to get me involved into game development, to get interested in it enough to actully commit enough of my time to make great projects?

Old one started to struggle at 5000 sprites, new one runs above 170FPS with 10000 spites (as long it doesn't need to switch context too much between shaders and textures), although it can tank to 60 if per-pixel collision detection is needed. Hit-box detection is already done, the likely issue is that in this example, it needs to pull the collision shapes too much (bit arrays, each line is aligned to 64 pixel wide to speed up checks as much as possible by ANDing together chunks, then check the result for non-zero value).

I finished this first game of mine about three months ago. Back then i was too anxious to post it. I would love some feedback on it generally. i am aware of some bugs, and generally know how to do it better nowadays, but i didn't want to touch the code anymore. I'd describe myself as Gamedesigner first, coder second, and artist last. so i would be especially interested in how the game feels to you.

Thanks to everyone who took time out of their day for this :3

Hi everyone, I've been working on this FPS for a while now and felt ready to share the first details about it.
This is my first devlog and I realize in hindsight that the script I wrote didn't really outline all the things I've done for this game but this is my first devlog, and this is the only way you can learn, right? :)

As I explain in the video, I did everything I consider to be hard and laborious first, which includes level design, rigging and animating characters, so that I can focus on my strengths towards the end.

So there's basically no gameplay yet, but that's what I'm working on now.

My goal for this game is to release before the end of the year (which should be pretty easy) and maybe even enter the upcoming Next Fest, tho I think focusing on getting the game done instead of a good demo is better in the case of this game.

Feel free to ask any questions.