Game Maker Tutorial: Flappy Bird

I made a Game Maker tutorial, where we put together a Flappy Bird game!

This is a great introduction to Game Maker for a first time user, showing basic visual scripting, and even a taste of coding in GML.


You can download GameMaker for free here.

And you can download the Flappy Bird tutorial for GameMaker here.

JetMechs: A Cross Platform Multiplayer Prototype using Unity uNet

JetMechs
A Cross Platform Multiplayer Prototype

I wanted to try Unity's networking system uNet.

So I dug up an old project, and went to work making it have multiplayer support!

Unity's uNet system allows users on Mac, Windows and Android all to join the same match and play together.

This prototype is playable on Android, by using an Xbox 360 controller and an OnTheGo cable and a Google Cardboard or equivalent.

I got stuck on a few bottlenecks along the way!
I mainly had trouble because I had two overlapping problems!

The aiming of the player's weapon was not syncing across the network, so the bullet was shooting straight.  This was caused by the local rotation of the weapon was not being synced across the server.  This can be fixed by adding a Network Transform Child to the root parent object (the Player for example, which needs to have its own "master" Network Transform on it), and drag and drop the child (eg: the weapon) onto the available slot on the Network Transform Child component.  Add a Network Identity to the child (weapon) as well.  And now it should sync across the network.

But my bug was also being confused by the fact that I had used Unity's FirstPersonController to base my original single player mech prototype on.  So I had to spend some time digging around 4 or 5 scripts to find all the local player specific code, such as input and movement, and applying the (isLocalPlayer) if statements around the appropriate stuff!

I'd done a pass at the player controls, but only later I realised that I hadn't completely separated out the MouseLook and SimpleMouseRotator snippets.  That had meant that the player prefabs had been stomping on each other's mouse look values, causing problems with weapon firing. 

Once I'd sorted out both those issues, I got it all working!  Hooray!

I'm pleased to announce that tonight I finally got all the basic multiplayer networking correctly set up!

The players can join and jetpack and shoot, across the network!

Also, part of the challenge I'd set myself was to build the foundations that would support Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, SteamVR, etc.  So I detect what platform you're on and activate the appropriate camera system.

Each player has a torch attached, which moves with the way their head is facing.

I'm thinking of making the levels darker, so the torch is more important and relevant.

Matt Chat: Some of my favorite videos by Matt Barton (Matt Chat)

Matt Barton is a fantastic guy who writes about video games, especially Computer Role Playing Games (CRPGs).  He also has a fantastic YouTube channel where he interviews game developers from throughout the history of video game development.

You can support Matt Barton on Patreon here.

Here are some of my favorite videos...


Richard Garriott 









"Choose Your Own Adventure" with R.A. Montgomery





John Romero

 

 

 

 



The Fat Man

 

GDC Vault - Free awesome videos about game development

The Game Developer's Conference (GDC) is amazing.  I went for the first time in 2015. It was super inspiring.  And most of their sessions are recorded, and many can be accessed for free at the GDC Vault.  

Here are some of my favorites!

Will Wright - Metaphysics of Game Design

Will Wright - What's next in game design?

Will Wright - Dynamics for Designers

Will Wright - Classic Games Postmortem - Raid on Bungeling Bay

Joel Burgess - Level Design in Open World Games

Stone Librande - One Page Game Designs

Stone Librande - 15 Games in 15 Years

Stone Librande - Game Design < Design

Zach Wilson - 50 questions to ask yourself when your level sucks

Eitan Glinert - Rapid, Iterative Prototyping Best Practices

Simon Darveua - Prototype: A Developers Best Friend!

Robin Hunicke - Deliberately Developmental Leadership

Tom Francis - How reviewing games for nine years helped in designing Gunpoint

Tom Francis - Efficiency for Game Designers - Lessons learned from making Gunpoint quickly without going mad

Fang - A live art demonstration of creating world through design thinking

"The Art of Screenshake" by Jan Willem Nijman (of Vlambeer)

This is a great video focussed on "game feel", or "juice"...  spicing up your game!

A great video to watch for inspiration at least once during every project you work on!  

Double Fine Adventure - A documentary series about Double Fine's ground-breaking Kickstarter game

The Double Fine Adventure documentary series is just amazing.

You can now access the entire series on YouTube via their channel.  I recommend it as a fantastic educational resource about how games are really made, and it's super entertaining to boot!

Dig in!

Warren Spector: Lecture Series at University of Texas

I wanted to post some of my favorite educational and inspirational videos about game development, and thought I'd start with this series of lectures and interviews by Warren Spector.  



These are the parts of the series:

• Introduction
• Patricia York
• Harvey Smith
• Hal Barwood
• Matthew Bellows
• Marc LeBlanc
• Mike Morhaime
• Tim Willits
• Seamus Blackley
• Paul Weaver  (incomplete)
• Gordon Walton
• Richard Garriott
• Richard Hilleman