For your first question, it depends on how much work you are willing to put in to find/make the assets when everything else is done. For example, the game I'm currently working on has almost all of the art assets gathered for it already, so I can just work on functionality. Whereas if you just use placeholders until everything else is done, you might realise that you can't find the assets that you need, or the things you do find won't work nicely with what you already have.
I would say to make games that will help you get more skilled with the tools that you are going to be using, rather than to recreate specific game mechanics. If you think you can already make Asteroids, then you aren't going to learn as much from the process as if you were to try and make a unique idea.
Game programming isn't about memorising how to recreate certain mechanics, it is about figuring out how to implement unique ideas from scratch. If you were to recreate Asteroids, try changing it up a bit and messing with the existing formula to give yourself some chance to explore.
Get good at drawing. I now do sketches of anything that I plan on doing further work on as it is so easy to quickly blast down ideas in rough than it is to try make something without something to work to. Just get some blank A4 paper (or ideally a paper size closest to the screen ratio that you intend to support, i.e. 16:9).
Staying organised depends on the scope of your project and what tools you like using. I have a ring binder folder and some plastic wallets that I use for keeping all my notes and sketches together. I also like using Padlet for laying things out easily in a sticky-note fasion, and it is great for group collaboration.
Keep your mobile phone or a pen & paper handy at all times so you can make notes, as you never know when inspiration might strike. You might be walking the dog, or on the bus, or lying in bed or whatever when you think of something super awesome, but by the time you get back to your desk you might have forgotten it.
Keep a log and plenty of screenshots of each stage of development, as going back and looking at your previous work with a more informed prespective as you progess really helps to keep focus and motivation. I often look back at the stuff I first made and compare it to what I'm doing now and am surprised at how far I've come. This will also be very useful in the future if you intend on getting a job in the industy, as you can show employers your progression, what you have tried and what you have learnt along the way and that you are able to reflect on previous work and use that experience to improve.
Don't expect your first few games to be fun, or even finished. You should learn something new from each failed attempt, so try and fail as much as possible to get better faster.
It is better to think in terms of objectives, rather than game mechanics straight away. Mechanics should be how objectives are completed. Mechanics are how you play the game, but objectives are why you should play in the first place.
The concept sounds like it will boil down to a game of economics and business management, of which I know nothing about.
Many engines/frameworks do have rules about how they turn a spritesheet into animation frames. Often they require the frames to be in sequence horizontally and with a fixed dimension for all frames. Each different action that a character can do would need its own strip of frames. Then the list of frames being used just changes depending on what the character is doing.
I think that good tools should allow developers the added functionality of being able to define what areas of an image they want to use explicitly, useful in your case of creating a character using different parts.
Good question. Your understanding of the problem is correct. Unfortunately I can't think of an elegant solution. It usually boils down to an oversight by the artist, not understanding the process that programmers use to make assets "do stuff".
Ideally, artists making these kind of assets with variable dimensions should pack all of the individual parts using a texture packer, which can store the dimensions and positions of each frame.
I didn't see that the Z key was to select before the intructions disappeared. I pressed P to pause but couldn't resume the game until I pressed almost every key to figure out what select was. My first thought was that pressing P again would close the options panel, or Esc, or Enter to select. Bit awkward.
On the intrustions, the 'M' to toggle music looks like a H. It's missing the dip in the middle.
I also found a weird bug with the hunter. The first one appears, I ran towards it, I died, then another hunter comes running in, leaving a trail.
For your first question, it depends on how much work you are willing to put in to find/make the assets when everything else is done. For example, the game I'm currently working on has almost all of the art assets gathered for it already, so I can just work on functionality. Whereas if you just use placeholders until everything else is done, you might realise that you can't find the assets that you need, or the things you do find won't work nicely with what you already have.
I would say to make games that will help you get more skilled with the tools that you are going to be using, rather than to recreate specific game mechanics. If you think you can already make Asteroids, then you aren't going to learn as much from the process as if you were to try and make a unique idea.
Game programming isn't about memorising how to recreate certain mechanics, it is about figuring out how to implement unique ideas from scratch. If you were to recreate Asteroids, try changing it up a bit and messing with the existing formula to give yourself some chance to explore.
Get good at drawing. I now do sketches of anything that I plan on doing further work on as it is so easy to quickly blast down ideas in rough than it is to try make something without something to work to. Just get some blank A4 paper (or ideally a paper size closest to the screen ratio that you intend to support, i.e. 16:9).
Staying organised depends on the scope of your project and what tools you like using. I have a ring binder folder and some plastic wallets that I use for keeping all my notes and sketches together. I also like using Padlet for laying things out easily in a sticky-note fasion, and it is great for group collaboration.
Keep your mobile phone or a pen & paper handy at all times so you can make notes, as you never know when inspiration might strike. You might be walking the dog, or on the bus, or lying in bed or whatever when you think of something super awesome, but by the time you get back to your desk you might have forgotten it.
Keep a log and plenty of screenshots of each stage of development, as going back and looking at your previous work with a more informed prespective as you progess really helps to keep focus and motivation. I often look back at the stuff I first made and compare it to what I'm doing now and am surprised at how far I've come. This will also be very useful in the future if you intend on getting a job in the industy, as you can show employers your progression, what you have tried and what you have learnt along the way and that you are able to reflect on previous work and use that experience to improve.
Don't expect your first few games to be fun, or even finished. You should learn something new from each failed attempt, so try and fail as much as possible to get better faster.
Check out this game made with Phaser. Quite similar to what is being discussed here.
http://www.html5gamedevs.com/topic/22681-phaser-wip-apocashop-papers-ple...
Cool game, good job, but I would pay nothing for this considering it uses what sounds like ripped music and sound effects.
The last post was 2 years ago dude...
It is better to think in terms of objectives, rather than game mechanics straight away. Mechanics should be how objectives are completed. Mechanics are how you play the game, but objectives are why you should play in the first place.
The concept sounds like it will boil down to a game of economics and business management, of which I know nothing about.
Many engines/frameworks do have rules about how they turn a spritesheet into animation frames. Often they require the frames to be in sequence horizontally and with a fixed dimension for all frames. Each different action that a character can do would need its own strip of frames. Then the list of frames being used just changes depending on what the character is doing.
I think that good tools should allow developers the added functionality of being able to define what areas of an image they want to use explicitly, useful in your case of creating a character using different parts.
Good question. Your understanding of the problem is correct. Unfortunately I can't think of an elegant solution. It usually boils down to an oversight by the artist, not understanding the process that programmers use to make assets "do stuff".
Ideally, artists making these kind of assets with variable dimensions should pack all of the individual parts using a texture packer, which can store the dimensions and positions of each frame.
I have always found the search tool to be near useless. I just use Google instead, putting opengameart in the search query.
I didn't see that the Z key was to select before the intructions disappeared. I pressed P to pause but couldn't resume the game until I pressed almost every key to figure out what select was. My first thought was that pressing P again would close the options panel, or Esc, or Enter to select. Bit awkward.
On the intrustions, the 'M' to toggle music looks like a H. It's missing the dip in the middle.
I also found a weird bug with the hunter. The first one appears, I ran towards it, I died, then another hunter comes running in, leaving a trail.
I want to have your babies. O_o
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