Interested in Game Dev?

haha I think when more new people get on you can have this discussion

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Hey Ashes, I am always looking to polish up my coding skills.
In my experience writing games is a great way to do this.

Most of my programing experience is ‘Bare metal’ C programming for Mirco-controllers but I would also like to gain some more experience in programming for a PC.

Preferably I would like to learn more C++ with OpenGL, SDL or GLUT etc, but I don’t mind learning a scripting language for higher level programming if that is more suitable.

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@Severok I’m not familiar with too many C++ things. I looked into mruby once, which is barely wrapped over C++. SDL is a pretty solid choice, from what I’ve heard.

Are you interested in working on some sort of game? I can help design content etc. if that’s a bottleneck for you.

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Honestly my largest bottleneck is keeping momentum with a project once I have started it. That setting goals that are far too grand to really be achiveable with my avaliable time.

I have a few ideas for games that I would love to try including:

  • Story based visual novel style game about being a revert in the west.

    • Gameplay involves setting a daily schedule that affects how different stats grow (Eg specifying time to study islam grows the Ilm stat, fasting and maintaining Salaat grows Iman, studying for school grows general knowledge, working out gains fitness, relaxing/gaming/socialising drops stress, etc.)
    • Differnt story elements occur if specific criteria have been met by certain times (Eg have made friends with this person at this time, this dialog-tree path is only avaliable if your Ilm is high enough, etc)
    • Game ends after x Years with ending selected from game events triggered and final stats (Eg character goes on to have a good job/family (High knowledge, high Iman, Good story events triggered), character ends up with great job but ultimately departs from Islam (High knowledge, Very Low Ilm/Iman, Negative story elements triggered)
  • A procedually generated point and click horror game
    *Like ‘clock tower’ series games with the map layout, avaliable puzzles/items/red-herring items and enemy AI changing with each playthough
    *2D-sprite based engine, simple AI controlled by behavioural variables.

  • An AI driven city building simulation where the player can only issue new laws and mandates with the AI governing how things get built.
    *Small scale town like DF or Banished
    *Town and Economy AI driven by individual agents making decisions based on their stats and needs
    *Eg Villager X has skills in wood working, detects need for goods -> Starts building a carpentry workshop in where game detects is optimal location, establishes trade network, buying wood from Villager Y at the lumber yard, selling to Villager Z at the general store.
    *Player adjusts the Economic and moral growth of the town by leveraging taxes and implementing new laws to guide the short sighted AI away from economic collapse, starvation while trying to balance between Overt crime/immorallity and open rebellion.
    *Imagined 2D - Sprite based, top down perspective.

I also have some ideas for tools to help development rather than games themselves.
Eg:

  • Signal processing software that accepts raw music audio files, computes the spectrum (Fourier transforms) to determine the main frequencies (upto 5 channels) at each moment then grabs recordings of human voice of various tones across the musical scale and mixes them to generate an auto-naseed singing in a similar fashion to the old MIDI format audio.
    *Results should be either intresting or hilarious.
    *Some form of hysteris should be used to smooth the resulting frequency selection to the nasheed isn’t chaotically jumping in tone, but rather holds the major tones until the original tune shifts significantly.
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“Grand ideas” really summarizes our biggest challenge as game developers.

Let me know if you want to collaborate. I’m not a C++ person (I hate fighting with the compiler/linker), but I’ll be happy to try and help out however I can. I can probably also publish your stuff on my site to get a few more eyeballs.

There are some good visual novel tools out there. Art is a challenge, though.

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I would like MG to be a place for Muslim gamers to collaborate on making games. Good games that tell our story and communicate our values and who we really are. Some of your ideas really capture some of those struggles.

I thought about doing something like a game jam or workshop. But it’s hard to find people who can commit for, say, a month to make a game (in whatever capacity they are able).

I wonder if any of you are interested in something like that? Seems like we have an abundance of coders (@ashes999 @abrarsyed @Severok) – would all y’all be interested in lending your skills for one month? Learning new tools and/or languages?

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assuming said month is not now, probably yeah. Anyone else wanna learn Haskell? its been on my list for far too long… or maybe Rust…

Its worth mentioning that the project needs to be appealing. I haven’t done any side projects in a while…

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Yep, nothing doing until Ramadan is over. But this (communication + discussion) is good prep work.

I’m honestly okay with any language (or tool) as long as:

  1. There’s a mature game library on top. (I don’t think it’s a good use of time to write game engines any more. Albeit it’s fun …)
  2. We limit our scope to a small game. (That way, we can cut corners to do it fast, and skip on automated testing.)

Now, we are two. Who else wants in?

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I’m not going to pass the chance to learn something new.
Lets do this thing.

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Now, we are three.

Three coders… #derp.

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I had a long discussion with @abrarsyed about this on Google Chat.

TLDR: we all may have different opinions about what we think is right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, etc. All we can ask is that you work on the game and/or whatever parts of it you’re comfortable with. If you want to opt out, at any time, that’s your right.

Let’s tentatively schedule our first try for post-Ramadan (mid-July). That gives us lots of time to brainstorm ideas, tools/languages, etc.

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It’s cool.

I’m an embedded systems engineer so my instinct is to make the code as economical as possible since I work with very limited resource systems. Sometimes I have to pull off a project with only 16 bytes of RAM and 512 or so bytes of code space. I happily spend a week reworking functions to save codespace and clock cycles so I can then underclock my 4MHz single core CPU even lower to save on power consumption even further.

I can appreciate that my code style will not fly with PC programming that favours wasting resources for performance and simplicity. I am assuming that I will pretty much need to learn how to code all over again.

Incidentally this is also why I love retro gaming and to some extent indie. I don’t care much for graphics, but the old coders used to pull off some insane stuff with a hand full of CPU cycles and KB of RAM. Coders these days with essentially unlimited resources just seem so lazy by comparison, even making retro style games that require more resources than the entirely of the systems they are trying to mimic.

I will Insha Allah be available in the 2nd half of July. I am heading to Indonesia in the 1st 2 weeks for Eid so unfortunately I can not promise I will have internet access in the 1st 2 weeks

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@Severok I think your biggest challenge will be, as you said, learning to code again. With short cycles (like one month), the goal has to be to make a finished (ugly, functional) product. Most of us (including myself, over and over again) fall into the trap of trying to make it look awesome. And it never gets done.

I have a second battle to fight: code quality doesn’t matter. I have to force myself to write cheap, dirty code that gets the job done. Because proper code takes time, which we won’t have.

@abrarsyed do you have any game ideas?

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I have a second battle to fight: code quality doesn’t matter. I have to force myself to write cheap, dirty code that gets the job done. Because proper code takes time, which we won’t have.

oh man… thats tough. Code Quality is like second nature to me… compromising it is like… like… :rage::rage::rage::rage::rage:
that and code formatting :angel:

no game ideas that arnt for totally awesome islamicized open world RPG FF type games.

oh man… thats tough. Code Quality is like second nature to me… compromising it is like… like… :rage::rage::rage::rage::rage:
that and code formatting :angel:

Such is the plight of software engineer types. Believe me when I say I’m still fighting this after more than 6 years, and it still slows down my games because I can’t always make myself write trash code.

I think we should target a casual-type game – something fun and small-scale. We can always add more features and levels/content once we get the basic thing done.

That gives us the best chance of finishing (we have something done in ~30 days) but space to add to it once we have something going.

Obligatory read: http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/1gam-how-to-succeed-at-making-one-game-a-month--gamedev-3695

TLDR:

How? Reduce Risk: Use Save Points!

Imagine having to finish an entire game without a single game save. This is how many game developers create software: all-or-nothing, no safety net, you either hit it out of the park or crash and burn. No middle ground. No accounting for unplanned contingencies. This is a sure fire way to unintentionally aim for failure.

After you do this a few times, you will start to see the pattern: optimistic plans without save points along the way are extremely risky. Why not lower the risk and give yourself multiple exit points along the way?

Essentially, it’s like getting your game working with random/simple/hard-coded content, then add more features/levels/etc., better art/polish, etc. and you can launch your game at any time.

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I was thinking more or less the same.

Get some sort of simple central game mechanic down first then build on it later with more features and assets.

Maybe we should start trying to make an arcade game?
Simple central mechanic, avoid failure state for as long as possible, try to maximise points.

I’m cool waiting until you’re back from Indonesia.

Arcade or casual sounds about right.

I guess I’m on the hook since this was my idea.

What casual/arcade/mobile type games did you guys like, or have ideas to modify?

I made a Flappy Birds clone called Eid Balloons where you ride a dragon and grab balloons, while not falling off the screen, and avoiding birds, etc. That was alright as a technology test.

/crickets/

Did you guys lose interest already?

Sorry bro, I was writing a sizeable reply but I am on mobile and it was a pain. Planned to replay propely on laptop later but forgot. Insha Allah I will get back to you this evening.