At 12/11/23 07:16 AM, Chdonga wrote:

At 12/11/23 05:35 AM, JensVide wrote:

At 12/10/23 04:47 PM, Chdonga wrote: I can't remember which one was the first
-I made like an RPG Maker XP open world adventure with default assets
-There was this Mario fangame engine called the Hello Engine that I tore apart to make a Mario themed Ice Climbers ripoff

I think the Clock Crew Quickdraw game I made a few years ago was my first complete game. I made some stuff in RPG Maker MV but I couldn't get it to run on NG so I just raged and pitched it.

Now that you mention RPG maker, the first time I somewhat seriously tried to make a game was probably with RPG maker(I got bored).

Yeah RPG Maker has a spot in my heart. Every once in a while I consider just making something for shits & giggles. Somebody even made an HTML5 wrapper for RPG Maker 2000/2k3 games so you could upload it to NG. Maybe someday I'll whip something up in it just to say that I did.

At 12/12/23 08:44 PM, RodDeLaPan wrote: I was like 12 I think, used gamemaker 8 because it had visual programming. It was like a platformer without gravity (because i didn't know how to do that lol) and the final boss was my cousin's face ripped from his facebook profile, then i drew a knife on it with paint and made it bounce around the room. The HHD of that PC died long ago fortunately.

At 12/13/23 09:21 AM, BobbyBurt wrote: I’ll say City Escape is my first game, but it’s really my first significant game. Technically, it’s this one. When I started with Unity, I’d follow tutorials to the end, then use what I learnt to add to the game and make it my own. That’s all City Escape really is. Not a bad way to learn.

Back then I’d only post to itch.io, where the games got no traction. As a joke I’d set the games’ category to “hentai”, but found that it actually worked in getting people to see the game.

At 12/13/23 07:45 PM, darkmuffan wrote: This was my first game I built using GameMaker2. It was a simple platformer for a gamejam at the time, but it was very buggy. Definitely need more work done to be playable. Right now I'm building stuff with RPGMaker MV and I'll be expanding my game stuff to building my RPG.

At 12/14/23 07:28 AM, NukeThemAllGame wrote: I'm making my first game called Nuke Them all, it's a fun real time strategy game. I am a solo developer so keeping motivation going is the toughest part and learning to outsource and learn from others!

Making the game alone is tough.. It's a long journey but totally worth it!

At 12/14/23 11:32 AM, CrosEl wrote:

At 12/7/23 11:25 AM, JensVide wrote:

The very first (if I remember right) was a game called "Saga"
it was on Gamemaker studio, as the 1st version was free due to
the updates the full thing got.

It had strict limitations though; 20(?) Sprites, 15 objects, 4 sounds (including fx and music), 5 rooms, 5 backgrounds(?) and MANY timers... There was a little more, but I can't remember all of it..

Thing was: I didn't know any programming language, but GM allowed game making to happen easily due to preset commands that can be tweaked. Unfortunately I jumped in without really understanding anything that was there, nor knowing the importance of saving space. So, I had made this huge maze thing.. Wait, take a step back; I couldn't understand the sprite maker, so I downloaded many "placeholder" sprites to get going. So if I remember right... Some of the sprites were:

Pokemon trainer from GEN1
trees from 4 swords adventure
Metroid
Ridley
Ki blast
Frieza in his first form

And as for backgrounds; real life pictures of grass and dirt😂
There were more and I still don't know why I used photos
instead of tiles...

The rest of this gets a little too detailed, um:
The game was about finding the boss of each maze and killing him to move on to the next. The amount of objects allowed didn't let me graphically customize each area though , so every area was way too big AND looked too similar to each other. Or if the game was confused, it would be very glitches looking....

Controlwise: I couldn't understand how to make moving the player move normally. So when you go in any direction, you continue in that direction until you hit a tree or change to another.

Another thing was I didn't know how to make energy be a thing, so I needed someway to make it possible to lose the game/have a challenge. Thus the timers were used, I just gave it a very long time to let the player traverse the huge maze, then reset it when they move to another area. But running into a Metroid or Frieza will screw with your movement, and thus waste time. They moved in simple patterns so you had to time your movements to get by them, or be knocked into a tree and get stuck. Ridley would also reset your progress to the start of the maze, so you have to find a safe place to attack from (of course). When you ran out of time: you'd starve, and the game would reset from the start--the first level.

I don't remember if I made it clear the character was supposed to hurry or they'd starve... But that was how it worked; to save the world, you'd need to finish the maze before you go hungry (to be honest ...... I honestly can't remember much about the first two levels and only that I tried using enemy cues to let the trees know to change into blocks(?) To try making the environment look different, but it probably didn't work at all) There was only 3 mazes too, because the first room was used as the start screen and the last was used as the "CONGRATULATIONS" the end screen.

Being somewhat (?) Smarter now, I know I could've shrunk down the objects and made a much more bigger game with the little I had... and there were ways to tell the trees and other objects to update according to the area the player was in, but ...ahhhhh....

There's no way I could show anyone how saga looked (unless I remade it, lol😂) it was probably destroyed in the SD card, as it got corrupted...

BONUS!
Last but not least: this was all done on a tablet. Making Saga, and all games made after it Miracles, apparently. Because I bought another device recently with better specs than the tablet I used before, for the sole purpose of redownloading the same version of game maker again (For multiple reasons, the biggest ones being I don't get programming languages and couldn't afford a extremely expensive laptop pc anyway, that could use the latest version: Game maker2) . So I found a site that archives old downloads and got ready to use it again, but it wouldn't work... So I made a Yoyo games account and asked what was going on with the thing, and was told that GM never worked on tablets of any kind and was always and only meant to be on pc..and that anything I did was a fluke.

I look at every game made on that tablet with Game maker as a miracle (regardless of the varying quality) because of this information..

At 12/15/23 08:28 AM, zeddy1267 wrote: This is going to be a long read, as I cover most major hurdles with my game.

My first game is conveniently on this site, Viva Hexagon! Feat. Ipulo. Technically, this is just the demo version, and not the full game, but it has all of the basics. It mainly just lacks any singleplayer goals, so there's no real content aside from the leaderboards.

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/897374

It's a board-based puzzle vs. game operating on a hexagonal grid. You control a 2d platforming character on the board to pick up and move around the hexagonal cells. The goal of the game is to create matches in a way that pieces fall and make chains, which in turn screws over the opponent to make them lose.

You can watch the trailer on YouTube here.

There's also a 2nd major gamemode where you and the other player share one big board, and have to try and kill each other, either by kicking your opponent, or making chains and matches to reduce their HP. It's kind of like budget Smash Bros. where you are also playing on a Tetris board.

This game was a stupidly complex concept for a first game. There were multiple hurdles that I'm surprised I pulled off for my first project.

Firstly, I had to make a way to store the hexagonal grid in a way which worked with gravity (the pieces have gravity). This means that the typical hex-coord system that people use doesn't work, so I had to come up with a solution on my own.

Second major hurdle was figuring out how to move the pieces. Hexagonal grids don't have cardinal axis, which is where the idea for a platforming character came in. You may not be able to intuitively move hexagons with the d-pad, but controlling a 2d character with a d-pad is one of the easiest things to do. This means I also design this game as a platformer with decent movement.

The platforming part is neat. Since the board is made up of hexagonal cells, it can form very interesting to navigate terrain. The game isn't ONLY about scoring points. You also have to keep your board organized so you can move the character around it, which is neat!

The third big thing is that the pieces you pick up may contain many hexagonal cells, making them large and awkward to move around. The character has free movement around the board, but the hexagons are locked to the grid. I had to make a system to try and intelligently figure out the most "natural" position to place the piece. This is the most important piece of the game, since it makes the game go from unplayably clunky, to relatively smooth and intuitive.

A player won't notice this system, since it's doing it's job properly. Think of it like driving an automatic vs. a manual. The automatic does all the work for you, so you don't even think about it, unless you know what it'd be like without it. That's why I mention it, because it's a complex system that I'll never get any acknowledgement for.

The final major aspect of my game is the A.I. opponent. Everything I mentioned before built up to this, as the AI has to take all of that into account. This includes:

Individually, those points are all complex. However, those points also affect each other, which means the AI has to take the whole picture into account.

For example, when the A.I. picks up and places pieces, it changes the shape of the board. The shape of the board can also change if other pieces fall and land. This means the A.I. has to strategize both around scoring points, but also keeping the board manageable for itself.

The whole field is dynamic, so the AI has to be able to have a plan in mind, but be able to improvise as well in case something stops it.

I've actually considered making a video going into detail about how the AI works, just because it's probably my favorite part of the game. Most of my time developing Viva Hexagon! was actually just watching the AI play against itself. Seeing my code bring the AI player to life was really charming to me.

Unfortunately, the majority of players who played my game only played "solo" mode, which lacks the AI entirely, as well as most of the game's features.

Seeing players either give up on the tutorial (which is my own fault), or only playing "solo" mode is really heartbreaking. All of the effort put into my game was for the versus mode and battle mode, which is fighting the A.I. player. This is extra annoying because I've gotten very little useful feedback for my game, since most people haven't even played the main part of the game.

FuturecopLGF made a video reviewing the best games of September 2023 on Newgrounds, including my game, and unfortunately he also only played the tutorial and solo mode, which is unfortunate because his feedback is typically great, and he completely missed the most cool parts of the game!

One last struggle I had was that I've never animated before, and I wanted to give the characters relatively smooth animations. I'm never really a fan of when art styles visibly look limiting, such as pixel art, or just low framerate in general. I understand why those art styles are prominent, since it's easy, but I wanted to go above and beyond for my first game. You'd never catch me making a pixel art game >:(

I'm also a little frustrated my game only lasted 4 days on the front page, while most last several weeks. But oh well, that's just be being whiny!

At 12/8/23 04:41 PM, EmsDeLaRoZ wrote: I made my first game in Scratch, and consisted of scratch cat jumping cars that were passing by. It was more of a experiment thing, but that was it.

I've learned so much about programming and gamedev that at this point, I can make complex games in either C++ or JS, but since i'm currently full of work rn, those plans are to be left for another moment

At 12/23/23 12:12 AM, MomentumBaker wrote:

At 12/8/23 04:41 PM, EmsDeLaRoZ wrote: I made my first game in Scratch, and consisted of scratch cat jumping cars that were passing by. It was more of a experiment thing, but that was it.

I've learned so much about programming and gamedev that at this point, I can make complex games in either C++ or JS, but since i'm currently full of work rn, those plans are to be left for another moment

It's pretty wild finding my terrible scratch projects from like 2007. I really wanted to make "Runescape but in modern times and also you can own your own land and start a family." when I was 12. Surprisingly I didn't achieve that in Scratch.