When I'm creating games, I really love the coding part -- designing, developing the main functionality and "core" part of the game. However, most of my games are reasonably small/easy in terms of coding, but require a lot of content -- whether graphics, levels, sounds, puzzles, story narrative, etc.  I find development speeds through the coding parts, but nearly halts when it comes to content creation -- it's tough, sometimes boring work.  What can I do to make content creation quicker and more interesting/fun? I'm already integrating content into a working game, and building/using tools as much as possible to quickly assemble my content.  Edit: my question is not about learning any particular labor-/time-intensive skills like drawing assets or picking out sound effects; it's about that psychological hurdle when you have to just sit down and grind out the rest of your game, even if it's not the most fun thing in the world to do.
61629
How can I successfully finish a hobby game project in my free time?  How do I motivate myself to keep it up and drive right through to the finish without losing interest or motivation along the way?
45014
Most designers hit a roadblock at one time or another.   Few designers get those "dream" projects where they are allowed to create anything and everything they want. In most cases we all have to adhere to some restrictions.   After dealing with similar restrictions repeatedly, it becomes very easy to get mired down in how the design problems have been previously solved rather than finding new solutions.   I'm familiar with mood boards, idea books, and the like. However, these all seem to basically take the user down the same previously traveled paths.  What specific steps should one take in order to break out of current mindsets and expand horizons to look at a project in a fresh, inventive manner?  Is there a processes you use to conceptualize something in a new way?
41561
I've been developing  for a little while now, but I've found that I want to make the game world MUCH bigger. It's currently about 300*300 tiles, but has creatures and bad guys running around the whole thing, so I've got to keep track of all the enemies movement and hostile-finding algorithms. I'm wondering how I can scale something like this up? It seems (from code profiling) that enemies are the limiting factor, and it's mainly that for each enemy, I need to scan through all the player-units and creatures to see if they're close enough for the enemies to see/attack. Edit: W,S,A,D,B,Q, if anyone's interested in controls :) Edit 2: Please tell me if there's any way I could improve the question!
79097
I'm working on a web app with a team of 5, including me. One database administrator, one project manager, two programmers and me the front-end designer. This project is an internal reporting system.  Anyways, I've struggling a little bit with my team, the DBA and two programmers seem to control our meetings with what Data we are going to pull and the best way to work it into an object model.  And then look to me to design some pretty interface.  Truth is, we've never measured the objectives of this application and what strategy will best meet them from a front-end design/UX standpoint. We've done no wire frames, no planning of content, no planning of pages, no conversations on specific interface components, nothing like that. It seems my team is content with designing and building the entire UX/UI based on a couple of ideas we've spit-balled in meetings.  Forgive me if this sounds too much like a gripe, but I'm at a loss. How do I get my team to understand, we can't just throw the front-end together based on back-end data and the interface HAS to be well planned out and organized?
44485
The first experiment of a subjective proposal -  - was created 11 days ago and has been in public beta for 4 days so far. As a private beta user I followed the website since day 1, reading most questions (even though I didn't actively participate much), and so far my impression is very good: programmers is a wonderful website to read when you have some time to kill. It's like reading a magazine. In my opinion, reading  is much more fun than reading , and thus it's no surprise that most of the  actually belong on programmers, as they are subjective/argumentative (but have been grand-fathered). I believe that the very nature of subjective answers make them more interesting. Of course there is a (big) place for non-subjective websites where you can get help or help with a specific problem, but I think there should be a (big) place for subjective websites too. It's early to say (this is meant to be an ongoing discussion that will probably last months), but so far programmers seems to be one of the more successful - if not the most successful - proposals ever created. It has , and the only beta website with more views is gaming. So, what do you say? Should subjective proposals be allowed? Can they be successful?
8618
I am building a game in Unity using C# and visual studio. I want to make it possible for users to write code in some scripting (for modding purposes) without necessarily opening the source. What are my best options?  I'd prefer well-supported and battle-tested options that integrate well with Unity and visual studio, but I am willing to do a fair amount of work myself as long as it makes scripting as seamless as possible for future modders.
26744
I'd like to contribute to Ubuntu development some day. If you're a developer of Ubuntu could you tell me/us what are the prerequisites to start?   What languages and technologies are needed to know, how to make familiar with development (overview over the project) and development process? I am interested in the core of the distribution, the main parts, not writing applications.  I'd like to read some advice from the developer who has already some experience and can say the main points of his learning path and difficulties (that are general enough for typical Ubuntu distribution developer) he had to overcome.
116193
Is there any question of losing ownership of their work if people stream themselves coding? I can understand that streaming modeling, animations, and game design would be fine because even if you see someone do it it will take time to do, but what about code?  Are there worries about other people recording their streams and using their code? Is there some special case for these games like being open source or non proprietary?
100334
Is it possible to generate mesh at runtime in blender game engine? That is, is it possible for blender to generate meshes using python code when the game runs?  I really would like to know if this is possible, as my final year project requires use of this.
60655
I'm developing a 2D platformer with some uni friends.  We've based it upon the XNA Platformer Starter Kit which uses .txt files to store the tile map.  While this is simple it does not give us enough control and flexibility with level design. Some examples: for multiple layers of content multiple files are required, each object is fixed onto the grid, doesn't allow for rotation of objects, limited number of characters etc. So I'm doing some research into how to store the level data and map file.  This concerns only the file system storage of the tile maps, not the data structure to be used by the game while it is running.  The tile map is loaded into a 2D array, so this question is about which source to fill the array from.  Reasoning for DB: From my perspective I see less redundancy of data using a database to store the tile data.  Tiles in the same x,y position with the same characteristics can be reused from level to level.  It seems like it would simple enough to write a method to retrieve all the tiles that are used in a particular level from the database.  Reasoning for JSON/XML: Visually editable files, changes can be tracked via SVN a lot easier. But there is repeated content.  Do either have any drawbacks (load times, access times, memory etc) compared to the other?  And what is commonly used in the industry?  Currently the file looks like this:  .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .........GGG........ .........###........ .................... ....GGG.......GGG... ....###.......###... .................... .1................X. ####################   1 - Player start point, X - Level Exit, . - Empty space, # - Platform, G - Gem
25920
This is specifically about the development and planning direction of the game development.  I'm creating a fairly basic RPG and am wondering about the approach that I should take. I've been trying to outline it all in a flow chart first, but want to see if this is a good way of going about it.  For example, I've created a class called "items", which then currently derives into "Weapons" "Armor" and "Potions". I then derive these classes further into specific types and I keep going and going, basically as specific as I want to get.  Before I get too deep into this (again, I'm still planning) - I just want to know if this is a good way of approaching this problem.
95461
I want to play an RPG with my friends. However, they are a bit impatient, and I'd have to wait forever before they'd read the rule-book. I've read it all, because I found it interesting. They kind of like the idea, but just want to play. This brings two problems:   How much of the mechanics do I have to teach? Do I need to teach at all? I'm feeling insecure about them not knowing the mechanics, because later on they might have a problems because of that ("I thought that grenades work differently!", "I didn't know worshiping this god implies X", etc.). How much lore should I teach? The players inevitably live in the world, so - unless they lived under a rock - they must know something about the world. Their lack of knowledge about the lore results in their characters lacking common sense and basic knowledge. How should I help them create character, and do it quickly? They need to know the options they have, and creating a character can be lengthy process. Moreover, creation of warrior might be simple(he is just big, strong, and probably stupid); creating a mage or priest in a foreign world, where there are many different spells to be considered or gods to be worshiped might take some time before you know the options.   How should I deal with these issues? I thought that 2. could be introduced by making a scenarios that involve the lore, so they learn while they play, but what about other points?  The games I have in mind are mostly Neuroshima (primary target), Wolsung, D&amp;D, maybe World of Darkness.
36458
I want to make a 2D game that is basically a physics driven sandbox / activity game. There is something I really do not understand though. From research, it seems like updates from the server should only be about every 100ms. I can see how this works for a player since they can just concurrently simulate physics and do lag compensation through interpolation.  What I do not understand is how this works for updates from other players. If clients only get notified of player positions every 100ms, I do not see how that works because a lot can happen in 100ms. The player could have changed direction twice or so in that time. I was wondering if anyone would have some insight on this issue.  Basically how does this work for shooting and stuff like that?  Thanks
78952
I would really like to hear how other independents generally approach marketing their game with limited resources. I know how critical marketing is since I've seen it first hand on several fronts. I've been part of teams that didn't put an ounce of marketing into their project and didn't come close to meeting expectations. I've also poured a lot of time into visiting forums to discuss our previous title which resulted in minor bumps over time.  I really think  is doing some amazing grass roots marketing with the way they are managing their community around their Blog. They've massed a following that is willing to pay (far in advance) them for their game before they finish it to help support them. That's awesome.  But how many people are really willing to divulge such information that early? Should that be a concern? Should I start talking about my next project before I really have anything implemented?   What has worked for you? I would be particularly interested to hear how people approach Apple's iTunes store. I believe we're looking at around 33,000 games on the store these days.
122339
I have scoured the internet, but there are not very many resources for Java game development, not nearly as many as C++. In fact, most engines are written in C++. I tried to play a game made with jMonkeyEngine, but the game was terribly slow, to the point where my computer froze. I had no other Java applications running, and nothing too resource intensive. In contrast, my computer can play most modern 3D games with ease. If I continue to learn and improve Java now, and it turns out that later I am required to learn C++, making the switch might be difficult.  Is Java an acceptable language for serious game development? By serious, I mean high quality graphics, without much lag on modern computers. I also want to consider making games for consoles.
1774
Stuff like polls, recommendations based on subjective constraints, puzzles, webcomics etc. do not belong on the serious main SE sites, where professionals should be considered at work and having just a few spare minutes ("code's compiling") to answer questions, so they should not be distracted by such things. However, I'd also like to have a home for these things still using the SE engine. For the reason I mentioned before, this needs to be a separate place though. Let's call it four.[sitename-here].com.
20238
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this kind of question but here it is.  I'm making a board game where there is a deck of monster cards and I'm interested - is there some tool/script that allows to make images for cards from some text file that contains all the needed information (.txt, .xml or something else)? What i would like is something like:   1) make a .psd with labels for name and defense values (also background and other images that can be anything)  2) have some file that lists all the monsters names and defense values (where i can quicly change them and regenerate images from that)  Also you can add somehing new later both in psd and this file (like I/II/III for monster difficulty). Optionally - not just change text, but also images (that would allow to change icons from the file, ect.) #dreams  Is there some tool that allows for this kind of fast iteration?