r/gamedev

I can't seem to find a clear answer to this. I initially thought that as long as the game is launched through Steam, there is no need to sign or notarize the game yourself. Therefore, no need to fork an additional $99 on top of the $100 you already paid to put your game on Steam.

Is this assumption true? Can anyone who recently published a Mac version on Steam chime in?

Hey everyone! So I have literally zero coding or game development experience but I keep having the urge to make my own game. But the truth is that I do not have the time to learn how to code a whole game from scratch (Although I've been learning a bit of Lua) and I'm really not a techy person in general.

However, every time I've looked for advice online, the top answer is always how easy Unity or Unreal Engine is. However, I've tried Unity and S&box and it was far too difficult to get my footing. So then I tried even simpler systems.

I tried to make a prototype in Gary's mod. Too difficult, didn't know which way was up. I downloaded Gdevelop and researched Godot. Even with tutorials, they weren't very intuitive.

Perhaps I could try ROBLOX but I dislike the art style and you can't publish games externally like to steam. (I'm the kind of person that likes to go all the way with a project rather than just settling on a prototype.) Then I tried Coppercube 6 which looked super simple, but I couldn't even get an npc to walk straight.

The engine that has come very close to exactly what I wanted was Gameguru MAX. However, it has very limited NPC capability and the dev team is neglectful of the community's needs.

Is there any game engine or program/engine add on out there that has the ease of Gameguru MAX but with a higher ceiling?

Especially in terms of dialogue trees and NPC behavior triggers? Which is where Gameguru really lacks for me.

Hey folks! Solo dev here, working on a 3D game and trying to get my head around art budgeting before I start reaching out to anyone. I’d like to manage scope ahead of time and choose what I do carefully to keep production costs sane while being fair to anyone I take on a project.

A few things I'd love your take on:

- Are there visual styles that are more forgiving on production time without ending up looking cheap?

- Roughly, how long does a character actually take once you factor in modeling, rigging, and a basic animation set?

- How do props and environment art compare on time?

- And any scoping tricks you've seen working well — buying assets, modular kits, that kind of thing?

- Anything else I’m missing that might become a significant cost in producing visual art (outside of tech art - VFX, shaders, etc)?

Rough ranges are totally fine, I know "it depends" is the real answer. Just trying to go in with realistic expectations.

Im beginner this is my first game

Im making a 2d rougelike game and i just made the players and enemies logic using some squares and circles im thinking to start drawing simple sprites the rooms levels character enemies

And what tool is best for drawing pixel art

Is a game development degree necessary to work at AAA game companies? I'm just asking because I don't know what the process for getting into them is, I'm asking purely for the knowledge.

So in my custom ttrpg it’s a d100 system. You have skills that u try to roll under to see if u hit and it governs crits. Rn armor doesn’t do much but I was thinking armor has a stat to it where it lowers the star used to hit it. Is this too complicated?
For example if you try to hit someone with mithril armor and ur skill is 50%, cuz the armor is a 30 then ur skill becomes 20 for that roll.

Ok, I know not EVERY person even has a gamepad, but they're not exactly treated as a hard to obtain, unreasonable ask for comfortable gameplay.

That said, I want to know if Analog Triggers are also consistent enough even among el cheapo gamepads that it's fine to design a smaller game with them in mind? Maybe I'm worried about nothing, but I don't like to rely on blind assumptions that much.

Are there statistics out there for specific controller features that players have, the way that steam has computer statistics?

Hi everyone, I’m making a game with some friends, it all started as a university project but after some feedback we decided to continue with the project.

The game is basically q maze escape where you need to find some pages while being hunted, you can use some items to distract or stun the enemy but you can’t really fight him.

For the university project we were not allowed to make any type of procedural comportamento to our enemy, but now that the project is totally in our hands we wanted to make the enemy feel more alive by it’s own.

So I wanted some feedback and ideias of how could I make the enemy feel more interesting to play against. I want all kind of feedback, from pretty basic things of how to make the core of the character to more complex stuff.

The game is called infinity shelf and the vertical slice we made to the university is available on itch io

Ps: it is a 2D game

I want to use a method to create a 3d file that I can use in godot. right now I am seeing things like photogrammetry ( taking hundreds of images or maybe even from video? and turning that into a 3d file, or using an iPhone's Lidar to get a scan?

Let me know how you would go about recreating a room(s) 1:1 in a game engine with a low budget/minimal equipment!

What's a good architecture to be able to have a hierarchy of input actions, actions being interupptable by certain actions, but not by others etc

Let's say the player is carrying a box. They can drop the box by pressing [E]. They carry this box up to a door. Upon pressing [E] while looking at the door, the door should open, the box should not drop

For this example, I can simply code that if the ray cast is hitting a <Door>, then open the <Door>, otherwise if the player has a box in hand, and the ray cast is not hitting a <Door>, drop the box

This is a good solution for this situation, however, how does someone design a system that allows for this sort of hierarchy of action, hierarchy of inputs. I can do it with a long (loooooong) list of if-else statements, however that is not scalable

Since there are only a limited number of keys, and sometimes it's preferred to use only a small set of them, there will be many situations where pressing a key can perform many actions.

Obviously the actions have conditions to them (If looking at door, keypress opens it. If looking at box, keypress picks it up. If holding box, not looking at door, key press drops it), however as stated above, this will result in a long list of if-else statements

I'd appreciate if someone can point me in the right direction, provide some examples where one keypress can do many actions, show me some code etc

Thank you

Hey guys, fairly new game dev here. I'm making my first foray into the action RPG genre, and I'd like some feedback on a weapon upgrade system I've been designing.

In my game, your weapon gains levels. Every enemy in the game belongs to a specific type (fire, cold, radiant, etc.) and defeating an enemy grants a Build Point (BP) for that type. When a weapon gains a level, you can spend a fixed amount of BP to increase the weapon's stats. (For example, you can spend Fire BPs to increase the Fire stat, which makes a weapon more effective against fire type enemies.)

Has anyone seen a system like this before? If so, did it work well?

I'm still in the prototyping phase, so it'll be a while before I can properly playtest the weapon upgrade system. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from more experienced game developers. Do you see any potential issues or design pitfalls with this approach? I'd rather catch any major problems now than learn the hard way later.

I'm wondering if it's still worth posting there or if it's kind of a dead platform these days. Especially for indie projects.

If not, where are you all sharing your work nowadays? I'm particularly interested in places that are okay with NSFW games, since that tends to limit the options a bit.

Here is my game: 2D racing sim with advanced physics, highway driving, demolition derby, car deformations, formula racing and more.

Like BeamNG but in 2D.

Something like RPG Maker or Ren'Py, but geared towards beat 'em ups. Providing the core framework while allowing for customization and basic coding.

Looking for real examples, doesnt matter if its tiny or dumb. Browser game, mobile, jam entry, whatever. Just want to see if the weird creative stuff is getting built or if its mostly utility apps still.

Drop links if you got them, id love to actually play some.

UPD: okeeeyy. I see ya. So many "no"for short time😅😂. We are safe from ai slop games for now

i’m making a 2d game in ts + phaser 4. the game base resolution is 1280x720 and i use bitmap text for the ui

the weird part is that the font looks good at 720p, 1440p and 4k. at 720p it is 1x, at 1440p it is 2x, at 4k it should be 3x. but on 1080p it looks different and worse, like some glyphs are uneven or broken

i think the reason is that 1280x720 to 1920x1080 is 1.5x, so the bitmap font gets scaled by a non-integer value. i tried forcing integer scaling, and the text gets cleaner, but then the game runs at 1x on 1080p and there are black borders around the game. i do not want 1080p players to play with black borders

what is the normal way to handle this in a phaser 2d game?

should i keep 1280x720 and accept 1.5x scaling on 1080p? should i stop using bitmap text for small ui text and use normal text instead? or is there another setup people usually use for pixel art games with readable ui?

Hey all, I've recently finished my Game Design Bachelor Degree and with no prior professional experience in the Industry want to look for starting positions and internships. I'm a intermediate 3D character artist in Germany and don't know what the ideal CV might look like. I often heard that different layouts are preferred in different fields (more aestethic in design and more minimal in other fields), but how do you know which one is best or is a standard like the havard layout the safest option? My question is if anyone knows which CV layout is preferred for this position or in Germany/Europe in the Game Industry?

Edit: I know that the portfolio is the biggest factor in getting jobs at the end and honestly mine is not ready yet. I will try to get it to an acceptable state until the end of the year, but without a CV that won't make sense anyway. I'm just wondering how to approach it

I'm making an arena shooter, but it's really short, so I spent a few months adding some replayability elements. So far I implemented a few unlockable characters, meta-progression upgrades, unlockable weapons and some kind of level-up system which unlocks new bonuses on arena (like breakable boxes with healing items). Now it feels like there's a lot of things to do, but... At the same time I can't even call it a shooter game anymore - now it's all about replaying the same levels for the sake of unlocking new stuff! It is completely different from what I intended in the first place and now I have no idea how to revert things back without removing all that content I spent months on.

Should I just remove some of the replayability elements and call it a day? Or are there other ways to make the shooter game feel more like an actual shooter?