Category: News

There’s some nice news out of the U.K. this week, as Oxfordshire-based charity organization SpecialEffect announced today that it has raised over £300k (~$392k USD) to fund its charitable work during its recent One Special Day fundraising event.

This is a big deal because SpecialEffect’s mission in life is to help people with disabilities play and enjoy video games. 

To that end, the One Special Day (which was, incidentally, September 29th) fundraising effort was supported by studios and companies across the game industry, encompassing everyone from 505 Games to Double Fine to Unity to Zynga. 

SpecialEffect had set a fundraising target of £100k, and with that thoroughly surpassed it has announced that the next One Special Day will take place next year on the 28th of September.

Devs curious to learn more about SpecialEffect’s efforts and how to support them can do so via the organization’s website.

We do love Star Wars here at Gamasutra. And since now we’re actually getting new Star Wars games (and not just updates to the first Battlefront from EA), we were excited today to play the multiplayer beta for Star Wars Battlefront II on the Gamasutra Twitch channel. 

Now that our space adventures have concluded (with many explosions but few lightsabers), we’ve done the due diligence of uploading them for your viewing convenience. If you’re curious about the multiplayer beta (and what our thoughts are on the broader design of the Battlefront series), you should watch!

And while you’re at it, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel for more gameplay commentary, editor roundtables and developer interviews. 

Getting started in the game industry is hard! Luckily, there are lots of people who have done it and are passionate about helping others do the same.

A number of those people took the stage at the Career Seminar during GDC 2017 to offer would-be game devs — especially women — some advice gleaned from their own experiences entering the game industry and working at companies like Hangar 13 (Mafia III), Microsoft/343 Industries (Halo 5) and more.

It was a great set of microtalks, packed with advice meant to help anyone who has felt marginalized, pushed aside, or lacking in confidence.

It’s well worth watching, as you’ll probably walk away with practical tips and tricks you can use on your path to a meaningful career in game development. Now, you can do so completely free via the official GDC Vault YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas

Valve has shared an insightful breakdown of the various design concepts its team keeps in mind when creating new heroes and skins for Dota 2.

While the intent of the newly updated document is to prove a useful tool for Dota 2’s community of custom content creators, the breakdown itself is ripe with the sort of information game developers, artists, and designers find useful. 

With well over 100 playable characters in Dota 2, it’s no doubt extremely important that each possible combatant has an unmistakable look on the battlefield that quickly and clearly communicates its identity to friend and foe alike. To that end, Valve says that the page itself embodies the kind of general design concepts and principles that improve the readability and quality of Dota 2’s robust cast of characters.

The post runs through a number of guidelines for elements such as informative silhouettes, value gradients, value patterning, color and saturation, color schemes, character color key palettes, areas of visual rest, directionality, and much more. Following that, the breakdown shows character artwork for a handful of heroes in the game and describes how all the principles apply to each design. 

The full rundown can be found over in Valve’s Dota 2 Workshop. If docs like this are your kind of thing, be sure to check out the rest of the developer’s workshop resources on a wide variety of topics from loading screens to visual item effects. 

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Woodland Hills, California

Infinity Ward, developer of numerous award-winning games, including Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, is seeking a Senior Multiplayer Animator, with experience in game development and a passion for First Person Shooters.   

Job duties include:

• Create high-quality 3rd person multiplayer character animation demonstrating a strong sense of posing, timing, and weight
• Work closely with the Animation Director, Animation Programmers, and MP team to set a new bar for 3^rd person player animation in a shooter
• Accept direction and cooperate with the team to meet production deadlines

Requirements:

• 5+ years of professional experience in Games
• Authoring of animation trees and state machine experience is a must
• Proficiency in realistic keyframe animation and Mocap
• Expert level skills in Maya
• Comfort with scripting languages
• Must be extremely creative with a high level of craftsmanship
• Possess the necessary skills to be self-directed and self-motivated
• Detail oriented with a strong desire to contribute to a uniquely creative environment
• Must have strong problem solving skills and enjoy coming up with new ideas
• Excellent communication and organizational skills
• Strong passion for animation and video games
• Flexible, receptive and open to change

Applicants must provide samples of prior work including at least some examples of 3rd person character locomotion.

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

The developer behind the free-to-play online action title Warframe has announced that it is opening up a second Canadian studio in Toronto this coming November.

Digital Extremes has long based its operations out of London, Ontario and, according to GamesIndustry.biz, the new studio will be only a short drive from HQ. While Digital Extremes works in both game development and publishing, its newest camp in Toronto will focus on the development side of its business

“Toronto has become a hub of impressive game development over the past 7-8 years. Being only two hours down the road from our headquarters in London, expanding to Toronto is a logical choice to continue growth plans for Digital Extremes and keep up with the pace of our growing stable of games,” said Meredith Braun, Digital Extremes VP of publishing. 

“Our philosophy has always been to grow smart at a pace that’s manageable. We’re looking for the best people possible to join us in making games that touch people’s lives and grow fantastic communities.”

The folks over at Eurogamer have asked an interesting question in the latest episode of Here’s a Thing: What happens to your Steam account when you eventually bite the dust? 

Where do all of those cherished digital games actually go? Can you leave them to someone in your will, as you could with any physical media library, or are they destined to float around in the void until humanity meets what we’re assuming will be a fairly sticky end? 

It’s a curious thought experiment. After all, as enter the digital age, it’s highly likely that by the time some of us meet our maker, we’ll have amassed a virtual library of considerable personal and monetary value. 

In the case of Steam, the subscriber agreement suggests that it’d be near-impossible for account users to leave their collection to another person when they shuffle off this mortal coil.

The document states that Steam accounts are “strictly personal, and may not be sold or transferred to others unless “specifically permitted by Valve.”

Of course, that wording also implies that Valve could make an exception in certain cases. But would the company set a precedent by letting someone include their collection in their will? 

You can find out the answer to that question and more by watching the full video above. Props again to Eurogamer for this one.

Blizzard is bringing a handful of new social features to the beta version of its Battle.net desktop app, including user profiles, avatars, and group chats. 

It’s a notable move that indicates the Overwatch and World of Warcraft creator is trying to reinvigorate the recently revived brand by turning it into a full-fledged social platform. 

The addition of customisable profiles lets users choose an avatar, share links to their various social media accounts, and tell the world what’s on their mind by posting an ‘about message.’ 

A new group chat feature is being rolled out under the ‘Blizzard Groups’ moniker, and lets users connect with friends by creating and joining groups based on their common interests. From there, they’ll be able to keep in touch, share strategies, and catch up on conversations they might’ve missed will offline.

Each group can have multiple text and voice chat channels, while group admins will get a variety of tools to help manage membership and fire out invites. 

All of those various social interactions can be managed via the aptly named Social Tab (shown below), which essentially serves as the new hub for Battle.net’s fresh-out-of-the-oven social features. 

“These features are designed to give Blizzard players even more ways to stay connected,” explained the company, “and we’re looking forward to continuing to evolve the app and build even more ways for you to stay in touch and join forces for your next adventure.”

Every single Battle.net user can try out the new social features for themselves by switching over to the beta version of the app. To do that, just go to the Battle.net app settings, click on the ‘Beta’ tab, and then hit ‘Switch to Beta Version.’

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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Originally posted on my Patreon

I want to tackle some game-feel issues with jumping that I often see in beginner GameMaker platformers. If you are a student learning about game development, or a hobbyist learning GameMaker to prepare for your first game jam, this article is for you!  

When I noticed that I was giving the same feedback to student games over and over, I dug into the tutorials they used. Many GameMaker students referenced Shaun Spalding’s excellent platformer tutorials for their first game. I like these tutorials because they are simple and straightforward in a way that won’t overwhelm a beginner, even one with no coding experience. 

The original tutorial for Gamemaker Studio

And an updated one for Gamemaker Studio 2

The trade-off for this simple approach, however, are a couple of game-feel issues that pop up as a result of the jump code. I’m going to focus on two small ways that beginners can modify the tutorial to make their jumping feel better:  Ledge Assistance and Jump Input Buffering 

These are common platformer implementation techniques, so the good news is that a lot of excellent stuff has already been written in depth about these concepts. But if you’re a beginner just building your very first platformer, this sort of stuff probably isn’t on the forefront of your mind. It’s already a big task to create all the pieces of a platformer from scratch, down to just getting your character moving at a basic level, so something like “jump input buffering” isn’t going to be a thing a beginner considers researching.

My hope is to connect these concepts to the base tutorial to help ease students into thinking about this sort of stuff with their games. Let us begin!

1. Ledge Assistance

Also known as ledge forgiveness, grace period jumping, coyote time, or a number of other terms, this is a fix for the following issue you may run into when setting up your jump code: You try and jump off a ledge at the last possible moment in order to clear a really big gap, but your jump input doesn’t register and you fall off the ledge instead.

The fix for this is allowing a few frames where the player can be not-on-the-ground but will still register a jump input – a grace period for jumping off of a ledge.

For an in-depth and  illustrated look at this concept, I highly recommend Kyle Pulver’s article on this topic.

Since this concept is so closely tied to input and feel, it can be difficult to fully understand by visualizations alone. So I made a simple demo to help people understand how the grace period changes the feel of jumping.

Try the Ledge Assistance Demo (keyboard required)

This is a very simple platformer setup based on the code in Spalding’s tutorials, but one where you can adjust the number of frames in the ledge assistance grace period.

The default is the grace frames set to 0, which is what it feels like in the default tutorial version. As you may be able to feel as you try to make the long jump from one ledge to the other, you can get into a situation where you try and jump at the last possible minute, but fall lifelessly to your death instead.

This feels terrible because there’s a disconnect between your input and what you expected to happen as a result. Kyle’s article goes more in depth into why this happens and provides an alternative implementation to avoid the issue, which is what I used to make the grace period.

By adjusting the grace frames (by clicking the up and down arrows), you are controlling the number of frames the player can simultaneously be “in the air” and press the jump button and still have that jump register. This is the “grace timer” that Kyle mentions in his article. Play around with this number and feel the difference it makes in the jump. Check the “show feedback” button to get a visual cue to illustrate when the grace period is active.

But Lisa, what is the right number of frames to use for a grace period?

Well, this depends entirely on your game and what player feeling you’re going for. If you are making a very tight, precise action platformer, then you’ll probably want to make the frame window as small as possible while still compensating for human reaction time (if you want to get all mathy, consider your target frames per second, and the fact that average human reaction time is somewhere in the realm of ~215ms, or you can just do it by feel. I recommend starting with 6 frames and adjusting from there).

However, let’s say you’re making a game about the laziest bat who “jumps” by flapping her wings a single time, in which case it may make sense to have a super floaty jump and really long grace period, so the bat could amble off the edge and start visibly falling before “jumping.” I dunno, I just made that up off the top of my head.

My point is that there’s no universal right answer here, you’re going to have to tune it with the feel you’re going for in your game, in which you have to consider many things: level of challenge, experience of audience, reaction time factors for your audience, input device, the fantasy of your movement, etc.

You will find the script example at the end of this article.

 

2. Jump Input Buffering

Another issue I see in a lot of student platformers is no input buffering on jumping, which is something that can feel bad if you’re making a game that requires a lot of repeated, precise jumping. Once again, Kyle Pulver has written about this and illustrated it at length, and I recommend reading his article

The solution to this issue is in a way the opposite of the ledge assistance issue: you still want a grace period in which a jump input will register as true, but in this case you want it *after* you hit the jump button instead of before.

Try the Jump Input Buffering Demo (keyboard required)

Similar to the other demo, when the jump input buffer frames is set to 0, this is what you get with the base tutorial version. If you happen to hit the jump button just slightly *before* the character collides with the ground, it will not register, and so the character will sit there on the ground and you will feel grumpy about it. This happens more often when you are trying to do a series of jumps one after the other, jumping as soon as the character hits the ground.

Increasing the buffer frames is basically saying “if the player hits the ground within this number of frames after I press the jump button, just execute the jump as soon as they touch the ground”

Again, there’s no universal answer for how big of a buffer to use. Play around with different frame amounts and try to feel the difference it makes in the jumping. You’re trying to find a balance between compensating for player reaction time and still having the movement look and feel grounded and believable.

And think about what player feeling you are fulfilling with your game. Would it ever make sense to have a really really high input buffer? What would that game look like?? What would the fantasy be for that input to make sense and feel good? Maybe you should try and make that game!

Read on for a script sample.

The Point

When it comes to the wide world of game feel, these are but two small tweaks, and one can really dig in and get really deep into shaping player input to feel amazing. There are many others to explore: tuning variable jump height, nudge assistance, the idea of programming jumping in terms of max time to peak as a number to tune around, and so on.

But when you are just getting started with your first platformer and are feeling like you have a handling on the basics, I think these are good places to introduce yourself to tuning player input. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, especially if you aren’t an experienced coder, when you take on too much right off the bat.

And you can see when looking at the script itself below, even these two tweaks get quite a bit more complicated than the original tutorial script for player movement.

But I think it’s a good place to start, and a great way to add a little extra polish to your first platformer, be it for a class project or a game jam or just for fun.

 

Script Samples

If you are following Spalding’s GameMaker tutorial, you should be able to copy and paste these scripts into the player object’s Create event and Step events, respectively. Set grace_jump_time and jump_buffer to whatever number felt good to you when playing with the two demos. I tried to comment thoroughly. Or you can just look at the whole GameMaker project attached below. Good luck!

Modified Player Create Event

Modified Player Step Event

 

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