The stuff no one tells you about game development (Developing 7)

Developing is an on-going YouTube series, where I share the step-by-step process of making my first video game: Mind Over Magnet!

This time on Developing I’m building all the boring stuff that sits behind the scenes and makes this game actually work. But it has some surprising advantages for me, as a developer…

=== Links ====

Unity Eyedropper Asset

=== Credits ===

Music By:

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported "Share Alike" (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

YouTube Audio Library

=== Subtitles ===

[GeneralBolas]

"And yes, I realize that 'future Mark problems' are starting to stack up a bit."

Welcome to game development. Or software development in general. Or really, making *anything.*

[tomaszniemiec]

Just to clarify it for everyone who's starting: when Mark said: "it's worth putting in some extra effort at the beginning' he did not mean before the MVP, before you haven't first inspected your core idea(s) are worth pursuing and which are not.
Fail fast. Fail early. Inspect and adapt.

[Lugmillord]

As a software developer, I'm really impressed with how professional your approach has become in this short time span! Credit where credit is due!

[RobotPlaysGames]

I’m so grateful that you focused on the “boring stuff” in this video. It was very illuminating. Thanks!

[patriksanchez]

Here is my feedback:

-I totally got the eureka moments in every level
-It will be easier to automatically grab de magnet
-I got softlocked many times so the restart was nice. I dunno if it will be better for players to get less stuck than the reset
-Initially I thought I should return to the key hub, that made me feel as if the level endings were anticlimactic
-I'll love to move while aiming, it feels more fluent
-The key as a concept and progress tracker is nice but I don't know how well it fits in the game. The doors weren't like the key type so it doesn't make sense to open them with it, also it's kinda weird to just throw them thru the pipe... maybe a fuse or something that restores the energy will be better
-Maybe it will be nice if the polarity affects the magnet character, for example making the positive smile and the negative sad
-The main character could shine more while aiming, maybe a subtle movement in the eyes following the aim

Overall I loved it and am really thankful that it was free for everyone so I could try it ♥

[lightningwarrior]

Now that Mark knows how to make games, he can take part in the GMTK Game Jam, one of the biggest Game Jams ever

[roonkolos]

When people think some options, difficulties and such are simple switch flips, they entirely ignore how such a simple function can take a lot to make work in the first place. Even longer to make it work *properly* .

It's not always as simple as change some code lines. Hell it could actually risk breaking the fun or even the game itself at the worst of times

Game Development is a lot if time, effort and more

[ayushchoudhury]

Imagine being talented and dedicated enough to not just make a game on your own, but also make a high quality video series detailing your design processes at the same time! Really amazing stuff!

[Dkryption]

"And so I abused my internet fame to get someone much smarter than me to build that exact thing I just described"
fantastic line
😅

[darksentinel]

I really enjoy that in the devlogs for the game Astortion, the dev actually took a video to go over the entire structure of how the game is saved.

The whole Astortion devlog series is amazing btw

[needamuffin]

Most of what you're talking about here is called "abstraction", despecifying capabilities in order to make them generic and reusable as well as linking related settings and configurations to minimize the effort required to make further changes. It's a core tenet of software development and my primary concern when designing application enhancements for my job. I'd much rather spend the extra time up front designing something that not only solves the current issue, but also related past issues as well as potential future ones. In the end, if done well, it significantly reduces overall complexity while skyrocketing maintainability. It's also a puzzle that I tend to take as personal challenges.

[NoLootStudios]

Today alone I sat down for 3 hours, just to add 3 more animations to the player, and 2 hours to add 3 animations for an enemy. I could only use two of them, but thats just maybe.

The player got 4 directional movement. So each direction needs 4 frames of loopable animation. The player has around 100 types of animation. But this goes for many NPC's and all enemies too. I also have to draw UI, hearts, items, pause, load, walls, floors, tiles, bosses, title screens, menus, buttons, and EVERYTHING! The amount of time I have to use on graphic alone is insane... And then theres the rest. Game design, story, dialogs, programming, cutscenes. There is two programmers helping me too now..! We need to talk. Decide. Plan. Wait for eachother..!

Been working on it for six years now. I'm gonna finish this.

Hold my beer, guys. Hold my beer!

[pjheric]

mark finding out about managers after like 6 months into unity is kind of hilarious
we've all done it, amazing vlog as always mark!

[ZackBellGames]

It’s so cool to see you naturally grow and figure these things out. Managers, for example. The example about how difficult it is to change one little thing in a level. These are things that everybody faces as they grow as a dev—super neat to see it documented here.

As some others are saying, I will also reiterate by stating that you shouldn’t lose that initial spark to just DO and do sloppily, quick, and as little as possible at the get-go. Prototyping is prototyping. Get good at that. Remember that making tools and editors only makes you better at making tools and editors—it is easy to fall into an endless coding pit where you build another engine inside of your engine and never get around to making your actual game. It’s all about balance and knowing what you NEED.

You seem to be on the right track—just tossing my two cents into the pot.

Happy Dev-ing~

[smactork]

I'm so glad this series is still going. Extremely informative, fun, and engaging.

[thewightone]

Hey Mark, loving the series so far! I use Unity a lot, and if there's one thing I'd recommend you look into, its ScriptableObjects! They are really versatile tools, with a plethora uses, one of which is their ability to be used as the managers you described at the beginning of the video.

ScriptableObjects are assets stored in the project, not in any scene, so their data persists between scenes, allowing you to easily transfer data from one section of your game to another, without resorting to Singletons, DontDestoryOnLoad, or the dreaded FindObjectOfType. The options settings are the perfect use case for this! There are some niche details that take some getting used to, like resetting the values at the end of a PlayMode session, but the payoff is totally worth the learning curve!

[JanbluTheDerg]

The "unglamorous" nature of this series has been absolutely fantastic.... and now I feel like I need to step up my game dev skills lmao. I really am starting to wish my uni course had been more thorough in doing proper (if boring) set up and management, I mean, today I realised that all the pause functionality should of course be handled as a persistent thing rather than setting it up over and over again. My lecturers had just told us to make a pause mechanic one day and had no guide as to how!

[skribblestyle]

Loving the series, mate. Like another user said, a lot of what you're talking about is known as abstraction, one of the 4 core pillars of writing good, object-oriented code: Abstraction, Polymorphism, Inheritance, and Encapsulation.

If you're a new dev/coder and are wondering how to produce better code, look at some articles/videos about those concepts, and you'll really boost your code to the next level.

[Van-Leo]

id suggest keeping track of all your test levels and old stuff, in the final version i would hope to see a 'lost levels' style page that has all the ones you ended up scrapping by the end of it as you find out the feel of level design

[miserstecher]

i can imagine the pain you felt when you finally came up with the "options manager" that made things so much more organized, progress looks great though
keep it up man, you're going places //and yes i'm a game designer working with coders and artists everyday :)//