I like how when most youtubers make errors/regrets on the game, they don't tend to make videos on it but I found it really interesting how you expanded on it. Also, I love the procedural generation :p
This devlog is very insightful. I haven't started working on my own game map, but this definitely sounds like an issue that I will encounter in the future. I especially like the idea of scoping it down into a smaller map. Subscribed for more game devlog!
@Gamedev Aki Thanks for the sub and welcome! When learning game dev, its really easy to plan a bunch of features, but actually implementing those features can take ages!
Smart move to cut back on things though to get that MVP out into the world. Totally get the procrastination thing, but if it's just something you do for fun when you want then it's like you said, no real skin off your back by not working on it. Glad you're enjoying the process, man. Keep it up! Looking forward to seeing more progress with the game.
when i was studying procedural generation in uni my mentoring professor helped me make sense out of what i'll call "dynamic segments" if lets say you have a square that can exist in any corner. you have a default "open" version. from there you have a start script for it that gets the corner it's in and builds blocks at the outer walls. and leaves the valid entrances open. so you can have something that looks like an open box : : and close it so it looks like a tunnel [ ], i think with 2d you can do this by hiding layers of your prefab and having a script that manages that prefab. an other thing you can do in the generation is make the over all map far larger, and have a built in buffer zone between your major zones. this can be trees, cliffs, ectra. this way you hide your crimes and blend areas more easily. an other viable generation method could narrow the scope of wilderness areas based on their neighboring zones. if you have a mountain zone you can have it descend into a desert and use the mountains to blend into the other zone. you can use this + the above to have mountains lead to river valleys or deserts, have jungles lead to less dense forests ect. also the map isn't your "bread" persay. a good event manager will let all these things interact regardless of how they spawn in the world. if you don't have one it's vital for preventing spaghetti code in unity, if you do have one you should see if you can work out how to make it more dynamic! i hope this helps you if you decide to move back in that direction!!!
On the subject of procedural generation, I would recommend looking into the wave function collapse algorithm. In this case the world is procedurally generated, but the adjacent elements are determined by restrictions. For example, you can determine that a water field cannot be directly next to a grass field, but that there must be a beach field in between. This way a procedural generated world would get way more organic and you can get as complex or simple as you like.
It's been 6 months so this free advice may be a bit late. I'm also a new Game Dev but I'll share this brief with you: 1. Procedural isn't bad but it is overrated in most cases, I try to go hybrid; I make procedural tools and then hand craft my maps. At the start this was hard but it sped up development later. Basically I make a procedural generator, then spawn a map, store the map as a scene and edit it to make it fit the world. Finally save that map as a scene and use async loading. (I work in 3d so for 2d you may not benefit as much from the last part). 2. Singletons are your friends and be DRY. You have multiple systems you want to implement, and you should only need to implement it once. In the case of quests, making them with SO's is the best bet. In my case I make an SO that has a Quest ID, Quest Source, Quest Goal, Quest Name = Source + Goal, Description, Reward... The Goal is an enum which sets off other things, say it is a subjugation then the field for Target NPC Types Count opens. If you select 2 then you can put the Assets of the mob type you want in there and the amount of each that need to be slain. From there I have a system where these quests can either be randomly generated or assigned directly to an npc. The randomly generated part is handled by my Narrative Manager which will grab objects with the component for handling quests and well give them a quest or quests to handle. In my game it does this every in game month. I am certain the same system can be extended to weather, etc.
Great video, if I had one suggestion it would be if you are starting to feel burn out don't stop, just reduce. Try to do 1 thing for your game everyday. If you still want to quit after doing 1 thing then stop, but don't leave your game for multiple days without touching it. The longer you're away from it the easier it is to let go and not finish. It's also hard to remember what you were working on if you don't keep a detailed list around (Which you definitely should)
I’m actually excited about this game you’re building, it’ll take time but it’s cool that you’re recording this process because I’ve developed a curiosity recently for what game development is like and here you are recording the process lol Sooo I’ll definitely be subscribing
Rather than procedurally generating entire maps, you may consider setting aside time to create a generator that does all of the tile-placing heavy lifting for you. Manually placing corner tiles and edge tiles takes a lot of time and can really burn you out, but being able to make a simple blocky layout where different colors = specific terrain types and then handing that off to the generator would allow you to quickly prototype several layouts while still hand crafting the base.
You can define rules in Unity so you just use a tile and Unity automatically knows what corner tiles to use. No need to write anything custom for this.
I came across your video and you inspired me to make my own game. I love the art style of your game it’s awesome. I stayed up all night watching your videos. Keep up the progress man it’s so cool.
Hello :) little advise for procedural stuff (design/project wise). Before getting something "procedural", you should have a layout with what you want it to looks like (fun, navigation...) like if it would have been generated. Then, once you have something solid, you can try to implement the procedural to get levels like the one you did (not excactly but, close to what you're expecting :) ). I know a dev who worked on Dead by daylight, and in this game, the level are procedural / generated but, it doens't look like if it has been generated ^^ (it looks like a hand-made levels but nope) First, they build the levels that they wanted and then they implemented the procedural, which took a lot of time to get the result they were aiming. But! now it doesn't even looks like if it was procedural and, the levels are generally nice ;)
Also, one thing that can help you designing or taking decision, ask your self if the feature respect / help one of your pillar. If it doesn't, it might be out of scope ;) (just giving advise, I don't want to tell you DO THIS, there's a learning experience! :D (and your personnal opinion ;) ))
I want to have a little walk around town, so a demo release will be nice. And.. As a fellow British I appreciate the British accent at the end of the video aha.
I know you didn't ask but maybe save the procedural generation for caves or dimensions or something you can jump through - to add replayability to areas that don't affect the main world so much. Save things like random events that can take place for the overworld. Just an idea ..that I'm sure I stole from somewhere lol (also I only watched about 3 minutes of the video so maybe you already decided to do that, also I don't know why I'm here, youtube algorithm I guess lol)
I once heard someone say that the greatest challenge for an author is to create a compelling story set in a single room. Likewise I've heard similar claims by screenplay writers and directors with regards to doing a story in a single building. So if the mark of a good writer or director is based upon creating entertainment within a limited space then there's no reason to say a game with limited space is inferior to a sprawling world. In fact, one of the criticisms of bad open world's is how empty they feel. No Man's Sky was described as being as vast as an ocean but deep as a puddle for example. So for hobbiest, game developers who work alone there's no shame in focussing on small environments which can be finished within a reasonable amount of time but are slowly packed with as many details and gameplay systems as possible.
Why not do a mix of hand-crafted and procedural generated similar to Stardew Valley where the mines are procedural but the rest of the map is static? You could also implement procedural generation of plant life, etc. across the static map like in Stardew.
Procedurally generated maps is not really all that good, unless the game is survival based. When I play these kinds of games, they don't even have infinite scaling, or long stories. So the rng maps is just kinda annoying to play in. I played path of exile, and a few mobile games with it. At a certain point, it just feels like "damn, if I could do more in this game, these random maps would feel in depth, but instead it just feels like its made to make you be trapped in the game for more time than you need to be."
Are you sold on the screen size? I feel like its very zoomed out. Maybe it would feel better to have a more limited camera in order to push exploration. :)
It's looks nice! Props for having those many game mechanics up and running. To me the coding part always seems like the more daunting! I really like pixel arty styles! I was wondering if you considered adding shadows and light effects? It might make things pop off a little more, make it less flat? Just a personal opinion :)
@@ByteOfMichael oh I thought there must be a reason LOL bro your going to fall in love with them. Spend the time. They make painting tiles so much faster.
I think you're right on the money with the self-advice you're giving here. Avoid scope creep. Don't burn out. Manageable game size. Yes! As far as procedural generation, I've messed with that a fair bit and always love the possibilities. BUT it's always the same problem. Things look the same after a while and lack that hand-crafted touch. You seem to have good instincts and I would trust them.
I'm struggling to get my grid system and sorting layers for a top down game I'm working on, I want the player to be able to walk behind and I front of walls and such. This looks really cool and I was wondering if you had tips or links that I could use for my top down game. Literally any help appreciated. Also loved the video man. Very cool.
Make sure the pivot points of your sprites are where they touch the ground, and make sure their sorting is set to pivot. You can also go into the Unity project settings and set the sort dimension to the Y axis, so that sprites higher on the Y axis are in the back (which is what we want for top-down 2D). Thanks and good luck!
Thank you for sharing your experience with game development, but I have a question as beginner with game development I have problem to find the right and free game assets for my first 2d rpg game so If you can share with me the solution I will appreciate it. Thank you
I have recently started my own journey to my dream RPG game development, until i found your devlogs and realized my idea is not unique and there are like 10 different youtubers working on the very same concept and all my motivation is gone now.
damm i could retire with 100k here since my entire months salary is like 100$ XD been struggling with game dev for awhile with dementia and everything and I'm almost done with a hack and slash for mobile but I would really like to get into unity's ecs cause I would like to make a open world like Skyrim to see how much I can optimize it XD see if i can get it to work on my Samsung galaxy pocket XD
Comment dow below what you thought of the devlog!
I like how when most youtubers make errors/regrets on the game, they don't tend to make videos on it but I found it really interesting how you expanded on it. Also, I love the procedural generation :p
This devlog is very insightful. I haven't started working on my own game map, but this definitely sounds like an issue that I will encounter in the future. I especially like the idea of scoping it down into a smaller map. Subscribed for more game devlog!
@ChickenWing Thanks!
@Gamedev Aki Thanks for the sub and welcome! When learning game dev, its really easy to plan a bunch of features, but actually implementing those features can take ages!
Pretty nice I love your voice
Smart move to cut back on things though to get that MVP out into the world. Totally get the procrastination thing, but if it's just something you do for fun when you want then it's like you said, no real skin off your back by not working on it. Glad you're enjoying the process, man. Keep it up! Looking forward to seeing more progress with the game.
There's always an ebb and flow! And thanks!
For the procedural generation, just add a magic portal that leads to dungeons/instances that are procedurally generated. :)
That's actually a really good idea!
For dungeons I recommend cellular automata, it makes wonderful caves. Best of luck
when i was studying procedural generation in uni my mentoring professor helped me make sense out of what i'll call "dynamic segments"
if lets say you have a square that can exist in any corner. you have a default "open" version. from there you have a start script for it that gets the corner it's in and builds blocks at the outer walls. and leaves the valid entrances open. so you can have something that looks like an open box : : and close it so it looks like a tunnel [ ], i think with 2d you can do this by hiding layers of your prefab and having a script that manages that prefab.
an other thing you can do in the generation is make the over all map far larger, and have a built in buffer zone between your major zones. this can be trees, cliffs, ectra. this way you hide your crimes and blend areas more easily.
an other viable generation method could narrow the scope of wilderness areas based on their neighboring zones. if you have a mountain zone you can have it descend into a desert and use the mountains to blend into the other zone. you can use this + the above to have mountains lead to river valleys or deserts, have jungles lead to less dense forests ect.
also the map isn't your "bread" persay. a good event manager will let all these things interact regardless of how they spawn in the world. if you don't have one it's vital for preventing spaghetti code in unity, if you do have one you should see if you can work out how to make it more dynamic!
i hope this helps you if you decide to move back in that direction!!!
Great notes, thanks!
On the subject of procedural generation, I would recommend looking into the wave function collapse algorithm. In this case the world is procedurally generated, but the adjacent elements are determined by restrictions. For example, you can determine that a water field cannot be directly next to a grass field, but that there must be a beach field in between. This way a procedural generated world would get way more organic and you can get as complex or simple as you like.
Thanks for the notes!
It's been 6 months so this free advice may be a bit late. I'm also a new Game Dev but I'll share this brief with you:
1. Procedural isn't bad but it is overrated in most cases, I try to go hybrid; I make procedural tools and then hand craft my maps. At the start this was hard but it sped up development later. Basically I make a procedural generator, then spawn a map, store the map as a scene and edit it to make it fit the world. Finally save that map as a scene and use async loading. (I work in 3d so for 2d you may not benefit as much from the last part).
2. Singletons are your friends and be DRY. You have multiple systems you want to implement, and you should only need to implement it once. In the case of quests, making them with SO's is the best bet. In my case I make an SO that has a Quest ID, Quest Source, Quest Goal, Quest Name = Source + Goal, Description, Reward... The Goal is an enum which sets off other things, say it is a subjugation then the field for Target NPC Types Count opens. If you select 2 then you can put the Assets of the mob type you want in there and the amount of each that need to be slain.
From there I have a system where these quests can either be randomly generated or assigned directly to an npc. The randomly generated part is handled by my Narrative Manager which will grab objects with the component for handling quests and well give them a quest or quests to handle. In my game it does this every in game month.
I am certain the same system can be extended to weather, etc.
Thanks for the tips!
Great video, if I had one suggestion it would be if you are starting to feel burn out don't stop, just reduce. Try to do 1 thing for your game everyday. If you still want to quit after doing 1 thing then stop, but don't leave your game for multiple days without touching it. The longer you're away from it the easier it is to let go and not finish. It's also hard to remember what you were working on if you don't keep a detailed list around (Which you definitely should)
Thanks, good points!
I’m actually excited about this game you’re building, it’ll take time but it’s cool that you’re recording this process because I’ve developed a curiosity recently for what game development is like and here you are recording the process lol
Sooo I’ll definitely be subscribing
Thanks and welcome!
Rather than procedurally generating entire maps, you may consider setting aside time to create a generator that does all of the tile-placing heavy lifting for you. Manually placing corner tiles and edge tiles takes a lot of time and can really burn you out, but being able to make a simple blocky layout where different colors = specific terrain types and then handing that off to the generator would allow you to quickly prototype several layouts while still hand crafting the base.
Thanks for the idea!
You can define rules in Unity so you just use a tile and Unity automatically knows what corner tiles to use. No need to write anything custom for this.
I came across your video and you inspired me to make my own game. I love the art style of your game it’s awesome. I stayed up all night watching your videos. Keep up the progress man it’s so cool.
Hello :) little advise for procedural stuff (design/project wise). Before getting something "procedural", you should have a layout with what you want it to looks like (fun, navigation...) like if it would have been generated. Then, once you have something solid, you can try to implement the procedural to get levels like the one you did (not excactly but, close to what you're expecting :) ).
I know a dev who worked on Dead by daylight, and in this game, the level are procedural / generated but, it doens't look like if it has been generated ^^ (it looks like a hand-made levels but nope) First, they build the levels that they wanted and then they implemented the procedural, which took a lot of time to get the result they were aiming. But! now it doesn't even looks like if it was procedural and, the levels are generally nice ;)
Also, one thing that can help you designing or taking decision, ask your self if the feature respect / help one of your pillar. If it doesn't, it might be out of scope ;) (just giving advise, I don't want to tell you DO THIS, there's a learning experience! :D (and your personnal opinion ;) ))
Thanks for the great points!
I want to have a little walk around town, so a demo release will be nice.
And.. As a fellow British I appreciate the British accent at the end of the video aha.
haha cheers man
As a fellow British?
I know you didn't ask but maybe save the procedural generation for caves or dimensions or something you can jump through - to add replayability to areas that don't affect the main world so much. Save things like random events that can take place for the overworld. Just an idea ..that I'm sure I stole from somewhere lol (also I only watched about 3 minutes of the video so maybe you already decided to do that, also I don't know why I'm here, youtube algorithm I guess lol)
Great suggestion!
I once heard someone say that the greatest challenge for an author is to create a compelling story set in a single room. Likewise I've heard similar claims by screenplay writers and directors with regards to doing a story in a single building.
So if the mark of a good writer or director is based upon creating entertainment within a limited space then there's no reason to say a game with limited space is inferior to a sprawling world. In fact, one of the criticisms of bad open world's is how empty they feel. No Man's Sky was described as being as vast as an ocean but deep as a puddle for example.
So for hobbiest, game developers who work alone there's no shame in focussing on small environments which can be finished within a reasonable amount of time but are slowly packed with as many details and gameplay systems as possible.
Great points!
“This video is about procrastination “
“Also a word from our sponsor, but more on that later”
Nice 😎
ABP, always be procrastinating
Why not do a mix of hand-crafted and procedural generated similar to Stardew Valley where the mines are procedural but the rest of the map is static? You could also implement procedural generation of plant life, etc. across the static map like in Stardew.
That's a great idea, thanks!
For your procedual generation of terrain you should use the Wave collapse function
Thanks for the suggestion!
From the clips of you building the world it didn't like you were using master tile rulesets. That might help speed up your world building.
Ya I should definitely try to adopt those more!
Looks great! Always sucks (but sometimes fun) when you have to redo old systems and assets
Thanks!
@@ByteOfMichael :D
Good point with the "allow yourself to procrastinate" :) looks nice btw but how about having the middle city center being smaller? :)
Thanks and great suggestion!
Thanks! Very helpful.
Glad you found it useful!
i love the sandwich example xD
haha thanks!
The sandwich analogy had me laughing I'm going through the same thing rn 😅
haha cheers!
Very inspirational, your view on burnout and development speed. I feel like many more people should know that early on :)
Thanks so much!
Procedurally generated maps is not really all that good, unless the game is survival based. When I play these kinds of games, they don't even have infinite scaling, or long stories. So the rng maps is just kinda annoying to play in. I played path of exile, and a few mobile games with it. At a certain point, it just feels like "damn, if I could do more in this game, these random maps would feel in depth, but instead it just feels like its made to make you be trapped in the game for more time than you need to be."
Great notes!
Are you sold on the screen size? I feel like its very zoomed out. Maybe it would feel better to have a more limited camera in order to push exploration. :)
I initially zoomed it out from the player because being too close was actually giving me motion sickness :/ But definitely open to changing it
Really excited to play this game one day :)
Hopefully a demo is not too far away!
It's looks nice! Props for having those many game mechanics up and running. To me the coding part always seems like the more daunting!
I really like pixel arty styles! I was wondering if you considered adding shadows and light effects? It might make things pop off a little more, make it less flat? Just a personal opinion :)
Thanks and good suggestion! The pixel art was primarily from FinalBossBlues (finalbossblues.itch.io/)!
Why are you not use Rule Sets for tiles?
Ya I need to start using those
@@ByteOfMichael oh I thought there must be a reason LOL bro your going to fall in love with them. Spend the time. They make painting tiles so much faster.
I think you're right on the money with the self-advice you're giving here. Avoid scope creep. Don't burn out. Manageable game size. Yes!
As far as procedural generation, I've messed with that a fair bit and always love the possibilities. BUT it's always the same problem. Things look the same after a while and lack that hand-crafted touch.
You seem to have good instincts and I would trust them.
Thanks so much!
Did you move from game maker to godot/unity midway through development? If so why?
Nope, I began with Unity!
Take a shot everytime they say "beginner game dev" XD
hahah oh god
Game looks great!
Thanks so much!
Well, I am also an indie game dev, and I am also building a roguelike game. But I don't have sponsor...
these tiles look a lot like the time fantasy asset pack for rpg maker-
Good eye! These spritesheets are from many of the time fantasy asset packs!
@@ByteOfMichael oh, um... great.
Cool video!
Appreciate it!
I'm struggling to get my grid system and sorting layers for a top down game I'm working on, I want the player to be able to walk behind and I front of walls and such. This looks really cool and I was wondering if you had tips or links that I could use for my top down game.
Literally any help appreciated.
Also loved the video man. Very cool.
Make sure the pivot points of your sprites are where they touch the ground, and make sure their sorting is set to pivot. You can also go into the Unity project settings and set the sort dimension to the Y axis, so that sprites higher on the Y axis are in the back (which is what we want for top-down 2D). Thanks and good luck!
please dont make the health bar above the player like a stick make it more like the top left health bar
Yep, that was just in some of the first devlogs haha
Thank you for sharing your experience with game development, but I have a question as beginner with game development I have problem to find the right and free game assets for my first 2d rpg game so If you can share with me the solution I will appreciate it. Thank you
I would check out itch.io for game assets!
I have recently started my own journey to my dream RPG game development, until i found your devlogs and realized my idea is not unique and there are like 10 different youtubers working on the very same concept and all my motivation is gone now.
I can relate :D
haha cheers!
Pineapple
Watermelon
nice vid
Appreciate it!
lol I went to SNHU for a semester and my professors were awful
I've been heavily thinking about joining snhu for game design
Love it😍
Thanks!
damm i could retire with 100k here since my entire months salary is like 100$ XD been struggling with game dev for awhile with dementia and everything and I'm almost done with a hack and slash for mobile but I would really like to get into unity's ecs cause I would like to make a open world like Skyrim to see how much I can optimize it XD see if i can get it to work on my Samsung galaxy pocket XD
Good luck with the game!
sHuLd hAv usID rPg maKEr
lol
Check out my devlog, I solved the map building issue in the first episode
That was an Australian accent, not British. >:( don't push it bruv
uh oh
Apple
Orange
Hey marselluh! Would you be interested in joining a discord server for small game devloggers on youtube?