Tutorials are a fine way to learn at first. But I’m guessing the issue is that you’re copying the code without understanding it? If that’s the case then I’d recommend finding guides that cover the fundamentals of the programming language itself instead of how to make a particular game in an engine. In that way my advice to opposed to the first response to this post; Learn fundamental things about programming and the engine and then come up with a game based on what you can do. If you decide to use a tutorial to make a game then at least now you have the context to understand what you’re doing, you’ll actually learn more.

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.

For the NG games I make, I've made a modernized graphic & animation for medal popups:

But I'm still using the old, compressed sounds to go along with them. I don't have the chops for audio production of any kind, but is anyone else wanting to take a stab at making one? Maybe a recreation, maybe a new flavour?

We need more dev logs on NG

I 100% relate, I always wanted to just have good written guides. Having to pause & rewind all the time, not be able to copy code or even read it because of the video quality… I get that videos get more views and most probably prefer it though.

The highest quality written guides I’ve seen are by Cat Like Coding. They’ve mostly focused on Unity in the past, but looks like they’ve just started with Godot tutorials.

Man, I had a thought after seeing this update done not long after the art portal update. Isn’t it a breath of fresh air when a website releases updates that make it BETTER? Every time youtube, twitter or whatever releases an update it’s a small change for the worse. Mad props to the NG team.

My suggestion is to make something that you can finish in a month or less. That’ll help you narrow down the gameplay type to something simpler. An FPS or fighting game is probably way too big and complex to make in that time.

My reasoning is that once you get busy with school, it’ll be hard to keep making progress. The longer you go without doing so, the harder it is to get started again and the easier it is to give up. I say this from current experience. At the start of the year I had over three months of not being busy, and it led me to over-scope the project I had started. Now I’m working full-time and struggling to finish it.

Since you want to practice and learn, the best thing you can do is finish and release a small game rather than spending a long time on a big one.

I’m gonna say from experience that it’s a tough situation. Non-developers don’t have a realistic idea of how long a project will take. Example: I’ve spent over half a year working on a project without pay that was pitched to me as a 2 week game jam. It’s not fun slaving away at something that you don’t have creative control over, and being given ideas that will take way more of your time than they understand. I don’t have much patience for an “ideas guy,” cause I have plenty of ideas I’d rather be working on.

If you dig wip3out, then check out wipEout XL / 2097. It’s the second game, and the one I keep coming back to of the original 3 on PS1. I think it strikes a nice middle ground between them, whereas wip3out does some things better but goes too far in some ways.

I wanted to recommend this game right after it was released, but I forgot where this thread was.

A great one hand mobile game I’d play while eating lunch at work. It’s criminal that it’s only got 1,000 plays

I’ll be the one to vouch for Phaser 3. It’s fast, flexible, and can do a lot. Look through the many examples to get an idea of it’s features. The last major version was released recently, so you won’t have to deal with breaking changes from here on.

Oh, and it has the advantage of having an unofficial, optional and (somewhat) non-intrusive IDE, Phaser Editor. Once you start wanting visual tools for UI or whatever, you’ll be thankful that the option is there unlike most frameworks.

Maybe you’re putting too much stock in the NG score? Personally I find showing my games to friends is more fulfilling than whatever reaction I get from the internet.

As for playtesting specific feedback, I believe you can learn more from watching a biased friend play it IRL than the feedback of someone online.

I’ll try to remember to give your game a shot and leave some notes later

The CD iconography mockup is great! For awhile I've thought that it's something that makes too much sense not to do.

The discussion as it relates to games is an intersection of things I'm very interested in: Design and making the NG/web game experience better and more consistent. Specifically making it feel like a retro game collection is very appealing. Nitrome is a great example because those games all had a consistent pixel art style, the games were of a high quality standard and the logo animation often depicted a cartridge being inserted and a console starting up.

I had a similar idea to the cartridge thumbnail thing that @JamesLee mocked up, but I was thinking more in the vein of old game CDs, like Playstation and Dreamcast. Here's a little mockup:

Regular state

Hover state

The hover state has some info about the game, like supported features, akin to the back of a game case. The bottom icons indicate rating, if the game supports medals, scoreboards, cloud save data and gamepads. This mockup is in the style of the current website design, and more work could be done to give it some personality and make it really feel like a physical CD case.

Truthfully, I think the current thumbnail design is best. Mine and @JamesLee's mockup would create a lot of repetition that takes valuable screen space away from the author's unique thumbnail. Something that adds some kind of retro / physical media charm could be cool as a separate feature? Or if creators wanted to take it into their own hands, maybe make a game which acts as a launcher (links to) some games, really putting effort into the presentation to make it feel like a collection of physical games. Like what you can supposedly do with Launchbox.

I was tempted to participate in List Jam this year, but I'd better focus on my current project... Maybe next year!

Jumping from Scratch to a Javascript framework is ambitious, I think it would be smart to go with something lighter and more similar to Scratch. To my knowledge there aren't any JavaScript engines out there, just frameworks. On it's own, frameworks have no user interface for level editing or anything, it's just code. Javascript can be rough to work with, but if you're set on it then Kaboom.js seems like a great option.

Don't be afraid to check out engines that require you to use other languages, your experience with Javascript will help you pick up it up.

Good to know how the rest of the meetup went, since I could only stay for a few hours. Here’s hoping there’s another in Toronto soon

De Blob

OOH! I figured it was Featured Item, which I've been using for years. Big thanks to @filiprb, this is perfect for stuff I've been working on as of today.

I took a stab at it, here's what I came up with as a rough version of the first two 'gamepad detection' screens:

The actual binding screen is even more rough, because it's more complicated and I wanted more clairification on the direction of it. My idea is to have the current input outlined orange, and set inputs filled orange.

Give me some feedback on these designs, as I still want to refine them.

I think it would be a good idea to have a bit of animation on the first two screens, to indicate that the program is active and running. Something as simple as the orange elements flashing would do it.

I have some considerations about the implementation for devs using this tool, but I'll save them. I can't even figure out how to get it working in Phaser because I'm still pretty bad at JS...

There's this one NSFW platformer that I see shilled in on the frontpage blog like once a month with the same message, so I'm happy that kinda thing will be filtered out. My blogs have been updated with ratings.

I don’t miss closed source, restrictive engines

I'd change my icon shape to one of the hip new ones, but it's not called 'Super Monkey Square'

Holy shit that was fast

Quick upscale job for the thumbnail to the underexposed platformer Ripple Dot Zero. You may be familiar with the artist of this game, Simon Stålenhag, whose work is incredible.

Sadly the thumbnail will need some cropping to fix 16:9.

I noticed that change this morning and thought it was a previous update that I had missed. Good stuff. It still bugs me that the default sorting option on these pages is by year, because it highlights how rarely I upload…

You guys are really nostalgic for Facebook pfp huh.

Rounded square icons is where it’s at though. I’d rock it if my pfp wasn’t chosen with the circle in mind

Wasn’t a fan of the weird shapes at first, but after seeing people use them it’s warming up to me. That and the boarders make the icons feel unique and convey identity. Sure it sacrafices uniformity, but if you want that then go to Facebook. Personal expression is what NG is about.

That’s cool! I’ll play around with it when I have some time. I’m into Phaser now, so I’m interested in the JS implementation.

I can take a shot at it, though I dunno how I’d format it to be applicable to different project setups. Like how big the graphics would be, or if it’d be adaptable?

no, NOOO!!! I sunk my savings into dankman... we were going to the moon...

How will I tell my wife that we won't be able to afford a house since I invested in pictures of tank man weed??

To all the haters, HFSP. This is real and it’s the future. Going all the way to the moon