March, 2018

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The Raw Emotional Reality of a Kickstarter Launch

Brand Game Development

Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Just here for Highway s & Byways updates? Click here. Launching a board game on Kickstarter is an extremely nerve-wracking experience. So much so that a working title for this post was “Kickstarter Launches are Decadent and Depraved” – I was going to write it in gonzo style.

Dev 130
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Godot project management 101

Mircosoft Game Dev

If you are eagerly watching our Patreon page for news or following Juan on Twitter , you might have seen that we just reached our third Patreon goal at a very generous USD 7,500 per month! After hiring our lead developer Juan Linietsky full-time in September 2017 , and our GDNative and GLES 2 developer karroffel part-time in December 2017 , we can now hire myself ( RĂ©mi Verschelde ) full-time too as project manager, release manager, and representative!

Writing 52
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Thimbleversary

Grumpy Gamer

Thimbleweed Park's one-year anniversary is this Friday, and to help commiserate (I mean celebrate) the game is going to be 50% off for one day on all platforms. If you're thinking of picking it up, you might want to hold off a few days. This will be the deepest discount we've offered, after that, it's back to our normal price (but still less than the Guybrush approved price for a video game).

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v1.6 Released: New Pirate Mode, New Game Content and Better UI

Greenheart Games

As promised, to celebrate the release of the iOS and Google Play version of Game Dev Tycoon, we’ve now updated the Desktop versions of the game. Here are the goodies: Pirate Mode. Try your luck surviving the harsh realities of piracy in this new ultra-hard game mode in which you have to invent DRM and sell company shares to survive. You can find the pirate mode under the advanced options when starting a new game.

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Daily Pathtracer Part 4: Fixes & Mitsuba

The Astronauts

Introduction and index of this series is here. The path tracer right now is small, neat and wrong. Some folks pointed on on twitterverse that there’s double lighting due to light sampling; there’s an issue on github about diffuse scattering, and I have noticed some wrong things too. But first of all, how does one even know that rendering is wrong?

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How to Choose & Use a Board Game Marketing Strategy that Works

Brand Game Development

Welcome to the third unit of Start to Finish: Publish and Sell Your First Board Game. First came Game Development 101 and then came Designing & Developing Your Game. I’ve been slowly unfurling this long, long, long series of blog posts with wonderful collaborators and I have had an absolutely wonderful time. That’s why I’m especially excited to introduce you to unit 3: Marketing & Promoting Your Game.

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Godot is doing well at GDC 2018!

Mircosoft Game Dev

I went to GDC yet again (this time GDC 2018) trying to see how Godot is doing at the game industry. To my surprise this time, it was quite different. Game Developers Conference. Before anything, I'm sure that many reading this article don't really know what GDC is. GDC stands for "Game Developers Conference", and it's the biggest industry wide event for game developers.

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Dev snapshot: Godot 2.1.5 RC 1

Mircosoft Game Dev

As mentioned in a previous blog post , we plan to continue supporting the 2.1.x branch for a while - at least until 3.1 is released, bringing back support for low and mid-end mobile and low-end desktop GPUs via OpenGL ES 2.0 / OpenGL 2.1. The feedback on the previous 2.1.5 beta 1 and 2 builds was relatively good, and many fixes have been done since, especially to the (still imperfect, but better) tool to convert 2.1 projects to the Godot 3 API.

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GLES2 and GDNative, progress report #3

Mircosoft Game Dev

Introduction. Another month, another progress report! This time with the early beginnings of 3D rendering in GLES2 and some GDNative ecosystem updates. Roadmap. Done February 2018. meet with other developers at FOSDEM and GodotCon. 2D rendering stabilized. 2D engine merged into master branch. NativeScript 1.1 extension. Rust binding guidance. 3D viewport drawing. mesh loading. basic mesh drawing.

Mesh 52
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Sketchfab integrates with Godot

Mircosoft Game Dev

Sketchfab is a well-known site where you can browse a big library of 3D models and download them for use in your own projects. Many of them are free, covered by open licenses. They have just announced their download API ( announcement ), which allows third-parties to integrate with it, giving any application access to hundreds of thousands of models in glTF, a standard format that many tools, Godot included, understand.

Join the IGDA Community
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Dev snapshot: Godot 2.1.5 beta 2

Mircosoft Game Dev

As mentioned in a previous blog post , we plan to continue supporting the 2.1.x branch for a while - at least until 3.1 is released, bringing back support for low and mid-end mobile and low-end desktop GPUs via OpenGL ES 2.0 / OpenGL 2.1. The feedback on the previous 2.1.5 beta 1 build was relatively good, and many fixes have been done since, especially to the (still imperfect, but better) tool to convert 2.1 projects to the Godot 3 API.

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A Little Something

Grumpy Gamer

A little something I've been messing around with. Side note: Tiled is a great tile editor and come a long way since I first used it many years ago. This is a map section ( SPOILERS ) for the main map. It started out as a cute little story about what religion means and does to us, but the narrative is taking me in odd directions and I don't know if it will end up there.

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Join us at GDC during the Godot Meetup 2018!

Mircosoft Game Dev

Will you be attending GDC? If so, please come visit us at our 2018 meetup that we organize together with GitHub. If you are a Godot user, this will be a great chance to meet other Godot users and developers. If you are only interested about Godot (and you should!), this will be the best chance to find out more about the project during GDC. The event requires previous registration, so please register here.

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Maintenance release: Godot 3.0.2

Mircosoft Game Dev

This is a fairly small release but still something to be excited about! We found some small issues with the 3.0.1 release that we've decided were worth releasing a 3.0.2 for, the most important fix being that it's now again possible to run an individual scene of a project that does not have a main scene set. RĂ©mi also found the reason why tooltips were disappearing for some users, a bug that we've had for a long time.

Bug 52
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Daily Pathtracer Part 3: C# & Unity & Burst

The Astronauts

Introduction and index of this series is here. As promised in the last post, let’s port our path tracer to C#, both outside & inside of Unity. This will also contain a brief example of Unity 2018.1 “Job System”, as well as Burst compiler. There will be nothing specific to path tracing in this post! Basic C# port Let’s do a standalone (outside of Unity) C# port first.

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Daily Pathtracer Part 0: Intro

The Astronauts

As mentioned before, I realized I’ve never done a path tracer. Given that I suggest everyone else who asks “how should I graphics” start with one, this sounded wrong. So I started making a super-simple one. When I say super simple, I mean it! It’s not useful for anything, think of it as [smallpt] with more lines of code :) However I do want to make one in C++, in C#, in something else perhaps, and also run into various LOLs along the way.

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Daily Pathtracer Part 1: Initial C++

The Astronauts

Introduction and index of this series is here. Let’s make an initial implementation very similar to Ray Tracing in One Weekend (seriously, just buy that minibook). Source code is here on github. “Main” file is Test.cpp here. Pretty much everything outside that file is plumbing and not related to path tracing itself. Visual Studio 2017 project files in Cpp/Windows/TestCpu.sln.

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Daily Pathtracer Part 2: Fix Stupid

The Astronauts

Introduction and index of this series is here. At the end of the last post, I had the path tracer running at 28.4 million rays/second on a 4 year old Mac laptop, but only at 14.8 Mray/s on AMD ThreadRipper PC. Why? That’s what this post is about. The problem? Random number generator Turns out, the problem was in my little random number generator.

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Food on the Holodeck

Grumpy Gamer

In Star Trek, people eat food on the holodeck. Does the food disappear when they close their mouth? Why do they say it tastes good? Are they just roleplaying? Or does the holodeck special replicate the food like the replicators? If so, then why don't the crew of Voyager just eat on the holodeck, avoiding the need for replicator rations? In the first episode of Voyager, they mention the replicators and the holodeck run off different energy signatures, this why there aren't holodeck rations.

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Ransome *Unbeeped*

Grumpy Gamer

We just released the new Ransome unbeeped DLC on Steam and GOG. Give the trailer a watch, but I have to warn you, if you're offended by words like beep , beeper , beephole , or beephead you might want to avert your ears. It's a little depressing that a few people are actually upset that we're charging $1.99 for this. Making this wasn't free. It took a lot of work.

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Three Short Arguments

Grumpy Gamer

This video makes me seem much smarter than I actually am.

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Time to get Serious

Grumpy Gamer

I got some new D&D dice. Things are starting to heat up in my group and it's time to stop screwing around.

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MISSING

Grumpy Gamer

My new favorite YouTube Channel.

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How to Order and Test Samples of Your Board Game

Brand Game Development

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the last of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Today I’ll be talking about how to check your work.

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How to Find a Board Game Printer

Brand Game Development

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the eighteenth of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. I’ve written about How to Create Board Game Specs and Files for Your Printer.

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5 Reasons Why Mentoring Your Fellow Board Game Developers is So Important

Brand Game Development

Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Just here for Highway s & Byways updates? Click here. Self-publishing a board game for the first time is an incredibly disorienting and complicated experience. Many of you know I created this blog to mentor first-time game developers after my unorthodox start in the board game industry.

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How to Prepare for a Kickstarter Campaign That’s 1 Month Away

Brand Game Development

Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Just here for Highway s & Byways updates? Click here. Highways & Byways launches on Kickstarter March 26. As of the time that I’m writing this, that’s a little under a month away. Things are starting to get hectic around the Pangea Games office / my home office.

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How to Use Content Marketing to Sell Board Games

Brand Game Development

One of the greatest forms of marketing, my personal favorite, in fact, is content marketing. The term “content marketing” gets thrown around carelessly on the Internet way too much and with little meaning attached, but the basic idea is simple. Content marketing means you market your brand or your product by sharing information with potential customers.

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Combat

Grumpy Gamer

Does anyone out there have any good examples of top-down action/RPG games that have nice feeling combat? Preferably using pixel art and keyboard only. The combat in Nuclear Throne feels really nice, but like so many games out there, they use a combination of mouse and keyboard (keyboard to move, mouse to attack). I'm trying to do the whole game with just keyboard (don't ask, it's just a requirement of mine).

Pixel 52