Interesting resources for game development and study

Not sure I quite followed; that is with unreal engine - isn't unreal engine known for high quality graphics ?

I found this quite impressive - an RPG that's been one guy's hobby project for three years. Shows what can be done, even if a little rough around the edges. I'd be quite happy with that level of graphics.

 
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Not sure I quite followed; that is with unreal engine - isn't unreal engine known for high quality graphics ?

Unreal is known as being an engine that can provide high fidelity graphics, and that’s partly because it has an efficient renderer, and provides a nice selection of post-processing effects – which means it can be used to create high-quality games, and often has been. But it certainly doesn’t provide you with nice looking scenes – you can find wretched specimens on Steam of what Unreal games look like if you don’t have any skill. There’s a lot that goes into putting it all together in a way that looks good. As I’m often harping on about, I think there’s a tendency to overemphasise the significance of the engine, when a great deal comes down to the artistic and technical skill applied to it.

Also, things like decent combat gameplay and animation, the underlying game logic of an RPG, the UI, an inventory system, a dialogue system, skill trees, a magic system with all the effects and animation, a first person perspective switch for archery, enemy AI in a 3D space, and so on. That’s a lot of work, and it’s not so easy to do it well.

EDIT: Also, it's somewhat similar to what I'm attempting myself. When I look at what he's achieved, it's a case of "Hats off to you, mate. I'd be very pleased to get those results."
 
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Not sure I quite followed; that is with unreal engine - isn't unreal engine known for high quality graphics ?

As the other guy said, in reality a game engine can be thought of as a work space. Some may be better at giving you the freedom for providing high fidelity graphics, but you've still got to actually do the work to make them, and that's the hardest part. The differences often associated with game engines by the general players usually have more to do with a game engine's workflow and how that can affect the artists' abilities to execute on their art in-game, more than anything else. The very small changes add up to noticeable differences in a finished game.
 
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The Forge is an interesting project - a high-end open source rendering framework. The latest version enables ray-tracing for Vulkan. https://github.com/ConfettiFX/The-Forge/releases/tag/v1.26

As a rendering framework, it's designed to be used with other modular frameworks, to form a full game engine. Also, engines like Godot have been designed to allow swapping in third-party renderers, which could allow for higher end graphics when needed.
 
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Unreal Engine 4.22 is released. It introduces RTX raytracing and improves the renderer, along with quite a few interesting improvements.

I've gone with Unreal for my prototype project. I've got my head around it, and I find its way of doing things more appealing than some other engines I've played with. It also has a wealth of quality assets and learning materials, and I find it's the one that rewards me with pleasing results quite quickly.

The open source engines are great, but they just don't provide an easy route to the sort of thing I'm trying to do. It's possible, but just makes for much more work.

I'm very interested in Lumberyard, and it's progressing at a terrific rate, but that's also the problem - it's still in beta, and is a rapidly moving target. I think, for the moment, it will cause me too much pain. In time, though, I think it might be a no-brainer for single player games that want serious graphics power.
 
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An interesting little tool, Wonderdraft, for making professional-looking fantasy maps. Made with Godot, and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.




https://www.wonderdraft.net
 
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Have you done much with unity vs godot on linux to comment?

No. Although I'm a Linux man for general purposes, my game dev adventures have been in a Windows setup, because many of the tools and editors are Windows-only, and I wanted to experiment. Also, some of the engines are really intended to integrate with Visual Studio and other tools in Windows.

I just noticed the news from Unity, and thought it might be useful for others - it's definitely possible to do an indie game using a Linux setup, and many people find the support and resources of Unity to be compelling.

EDIT: In general, I've found that the open-source engines like Godot are great, but they tend (understandably) to be focused on smaller scale games. It's not that I'm trying to build Witcher 3, but as soon as you start to get into larger, more open levels, the big engines provide easier ways to handle LOD, terrain, level-streaming, etc. You could implement those things yourself in the likes of Godot, but, as a learner, I don't want any more barriers than necessary.
 
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I've found this little model pack very useful. Typically levels are prototyped as greyboxes, before time is spent on making them pretty. I've found that these prototyping models that add just a bit of colour and texture are much nicer to work with when you're trying to imagine the final result.

https://syntystore.com/products/polygon-prototype-pack
 
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I saw someone mention waiting for new GPUs with RTX support, and I'm also beginning to find that tech more interesting.

One of the things I've been playing with is dynamic lighting for day/night cycles and weather. That really opens up a can of worms, because none of the engines offer a great solution for dynamic global illumination. Most games that offer dynamic world lighting seem to do it in quite a fudged way, using quite basic lighting in combination with various tricks and post-processing effects. I think that's a major reason that open-world games tend not to look as good as more linear games, where advanced lighting doesn't need to be dynamic, and is baked into the scene.

It seems that the Unreal engine is not really pushing its current attempts at GI much further, but instead is focusing on the future potential of RTX pathtraced lighting. With the new AMD console GPUs featuring RTX capability, I suspect that it could become significant in higher end games quite quickly.
 
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I saw someone mention waiting for new GPUs with RTX support, and I'm also beginning to find that tech more interesting.

One of the things I've been playing with is dynamic lighting for day/night cycles and weather. That really opens up a can of worms, because none of the engines offer a great solution for dynamic global illumination. Most games that offer dynamic world lighting seem to do it in quite a fudged way, using quite basic lighting in combination with various tricks and post-processing effects. I think that's a major reason that open-world games tend not to look as good as more linear games, where advanced lighting doesn't need to be dynamic, and is baked into the scene.

It seems that the Unreal engine is not really pushing its current attempts at GI much further, but instead is focusing on the future potential of RTX pathtraced lighting. With the new AMD console GPUs featuring RTX capability, I suspect that it could become significant in higher end games quite quickly.

Wait, are you developing your own game? Or planning to?
 
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Wait, are you developing your own game? Or planning to?

Yes and no. I've been learning and working through various gamedev courses over the last year or so, and working on my own RPG system. I've learned loads, and sometimes I just post little tidbits that might interest others in this thread.

I don't have any plans to give up the day job, and I'm not really interested in the sort of limited RPG that would be within the scope of a one-man job. I've just made it my hobby to build the framework of the sort of game I would like to play, without any delusions about being able to take that to a full game by myself. I might nurse the fantasy that I could do something with it in the future, if the core turns out well.
 
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Paging @joxer;.

VKHR - An AMD-Backed Open-Source Hair Renderer In Vulkan


image.php
 
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What I've done initially is to split things into smaller sub-projects, kind of representing the different areas I need to get to grips with. So I have one building the RPG system and the interfaces, one for combat and animation, one for level design and graphics, and one on the non-technical side - the lore, writing, world, etc. I move between them if I get a bit burned out on one, with the writing and the graphical stuff being less demanding.

So, I do have something playable in terms of the combat system, but at the moment that's purely a greybox for experimenting with gameplay.
 
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I suppose that's similar to me only all my little games are not part of one project, but I'll copy/paste things from the previous project.

I only attempt 2D games, though. Which means I feel like I need to learn to do good pixel art more than anything else. Which leads me back to "space games need the least artwork" but space is also boring and empty.

2D often feels pretty limiting. Isometric is pretty much out of the question because I'm far too weak an artist to draw a character sprite from all angles and I feel like having equipment be displayed when you equip it is important. Like, I remember in Diablo being disappointed that you only changed appearance when you used chain or plate armour. So, the only Idea I have is to draw layers of equipment over the top. Also, Games with a birds-eye perspective look pretty horrible in screenshots and all the players look a bit like crabs. :p

One thing I was thinking about recently was making an action blobber but how do you fit your party in one square? like, if they're facing left or right, ok, easy enough. But it's the old goldbox issue of not being able to tell which of the 8 directions they're actually facing because it's just a mirrored sprite so it has to be birds-eye, again. In 3D it would be easy to do an isometric perspective just from the camera angle.

What's your combat system like? Does it use that sliding up method you were talking about? Real-time?
 
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Yeah, I think isometric 2D is one of the toughest for the devs, because it requires so much cleverly drawn art. I don't really think that approach makes much sense any more - it made sense when our PCs were much weaker, and it was done that way to get an attractive look without requiring much horsepower, but it's a burden to produce. In many ways a 3D approach is easier for that type of game.

The combat system is my secret sauce. :p I'm trying something a bit different, which doesn't quite fit in any of the categories. I do use detailed combat animations, but the sliding into position isn't really necessary the way I'm doing it.
 
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Secret sauce!? How aloof! Are you sure it's not just ketchup mixed with mayo? I mean, it's either real time or turn based. Do you think that's giving too much away?
 
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Aloof? I wouldn't say so - the secret sauce comment was with a jokey emoji, to indicate that it's tongue-in-cheek. It's just that some of it I don't want to go into right now. I couldn't really give you a useful description of it without explaining it in some detail, so I'll err on the side of saying no more for now.
 
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