PoetPhilosopher
Veteran Member
Greetings. I'm getting back to trying to work hard at things, and I've been working on a programming project, a video game. I'm making this post for the exchange of information, and I also asked staff if it was okay. Here are the screenshots of the game project I'm working on:
In the last screenshot, you can see the interface from which I work. It's a game making IDE called Game Maker Studio 2. One interesting feature of it is an optional compiler called YYC that, if successfully compiled, and after about 2 or more hours of installing Visual Studio and setting it up, it can convert the project to a native programming language for better performance.
Here is one of the textures I made to be used in the game - I made it with the program GIMP:
There is some debate in the game development community whether it's best to use power-of-2 sizes when designing textures for game development, but I play it on the safe size, so the texture is 512x512. A size up in power-of-two would be 1024x1024, and a size down would be 256x256.
Yesterday, I learned Batch editing in GIMP using a GIMP plugin. It saved me half a night's time when working on the project - that is, editing graphics in batches, or rather, many images at once.
In some cases, you can leave your art as is, and edit the image in real-time using a piece of code or codes that are ran from the graphics card called a Shader that is used to make effects/alterations on objects or the whole screen. But it does cost extra performance in the game too, lowering maximum framerate while the object, or objects, are rendered on-screen. But this is still useful if you don't wish to permanently alter the actual image.
Game development also has its own lingo at times, too. A level or single world is sometimes called a Room or a Scene. A background is called a background. But scenes or rooms can also have layers, and they are called, well, layers. And that concept is similar to the Layers found in photo editing programs. Lastly, in 2D games, objects which aren't the background, are sometimes called "Sprites".
Other terms to familiarize yourself with are "Texture", "Shader", and in a game with 3D elements, there's also the "Mesh".
Some references:
Polygon mesh - Wikipedia
Texture mapping - Wikipedia
Shader - Wikipedia
Additional, more novice things to study include lighting (point, directional, etc), and 2D (x and y axis) and 3D (x, y and z axis) cameras.
How I made the snow environment shown in the screenshots:
1a. I used a good, clean texture to provide the snow background.
1b. (For the dirt, you can use a second background and choose elements/chunks from it instead of placing the whole thing at once, a process known as "tiling".)
2. Now the fun begins! I go into GIMP and create some form of a grayscale noise texture, add a transparency channel to it, and make the image partially transparent, about 50%, then save it.
Additional note: There's an even better way if you want to go the extra mile - once the image is produced, click "Select by color", and remove all of one of the colors in the image, creating a more randomly transparent image. Such that some parts of the image will be 100% transparency, and some 50% - just with a few extra clicks.
3. I go back to the game engine, and for additional layers, I start applying the partially transparent grayscale texture creatively over the base texture and dirt tiles, sometimes applying color filters to the grayscale noise texture as well, creating a new looking product when it comes to the appearance in the editor, or when ran as a game.
Additional info: I am posting the pictures as an album such that I may remove them later when the game comes closer to release and becomes more finished. The tutorial should still mostly make sense. In regards to how the game looks currently, let me know what you think! For now, I'm in the process of gaining feedback. But in the long run, once this is a full product, I intend to keep my business life and forum life separate when possible.
So in this post we've gone over a few different subjects:
-The interface of the program I use, what you might be working with
-Creating a layered look
-Game development lingo
And I shared:
-What my project looks like at its current time. I plan on swapping more things out later, changing some of the graphics. But I wanted to focus on just one thing in isolation to get someone started or talking, which is something that I'm working on now: 2D environment work.
Feedback on other things you may see in the screenshots is appreciated too, though. Or comments in general.
In the last screenshot, you can see the interface from which I work. It's a game making IDE called Game Maker Studio 2. One interesting feature of it is an optional compiler called YYC that, if successfully compiled, and after about 2 or more hours of installing Visual Studio and setting it up, it can convert the project to a native programming language for better performance.
Here is one of the textures I made to be used in the game - I made it with the program GIMP:
There is some debate in the game development community whether it's best to use power-of-2 sizes when designing textures for game development, but I play it on the safe size, so the texture is 512x512. A size up in power-of-two would be 1024x1024, and a size down would be 256x256.
Yesterday, I learned Batch editing in GIMP using a GIMP plugin. It saved me half a night's time when working on the project - that is, editing graphics in batches, or rather, many images at once.
In some cases, you can leave your art as is, and edit the image in real-time using a piece of code or codes that are ran from the graphics card called a Shader that is used to make effects/alterations on objects or the whole screen. But it does cost extra performance in the game too, lowering maximum framerate while the object, or objects, are rendered on-screen. But this is still useful if you don't wish to permanently alter the actual image.
Game development also has its own lingo at times, too. A level or single world is sometimes called a Room or a Scene. A background is called a background. But scenes or rooms can also have layers, and they are called, well, layers. And that concept is similar to the Layers found in photo editing programs. Lastly, in 2D games, objects which aren't the background, are sometimes called "Sprites".
Other terms to familiarize yourself with are "Texture", "Shader", and in a game with 3D elements, there's also the "Mesh".
Some references:
Polygon mesh - Wikipedia
Texture mapping - Wikipedia
Shader - Wikipedia
Additional, more novice things to study include lighting (point, directional, etc), and 2D (x and y axis) and 3D (x, y and z axis) cameras.
How I made the snow environment shown in the screenshots:
1a. I used a good, clean texture to provide the snow background.
1b. (For the dirt, you can use a second background and choose elements/chunks from it instead of placing the whole thing at once, a process known as "tiling".)
2. Now the fun begins! I go into GIMP and create some form of a grayscale noise texture, add a transparency channel to it, and make the image partially transparent, about 50%, then save it.
Additional note: There's an even better way if you want to go the extra mile - once the image is produced, click "Select by color", and remove all of one of the colors in the image, creating a more randomly transparent image. Such that some parts of the image will be 100% transparency, and some 50% - just with a few extra clicks.
3. I go back to the game engine, and for additional layers, I start applying the partially transparent grayscale texture creatively over the base texture and dirt tiles, sometimes applying color filters to the grayscale noise texture as well, creating a new looking product when it comes to the appearance in the editor, or when ran as a game.
Additional info: I am posting the pictures as an album such that I may remove them later when the game comes closer to release and becomes more finished. The tutorial should still mostly make sense. In regards to how the game looks currently, let me know what you think! For now, I'm in the process of gaining feedback. But in the long run, once this is a full product, I intend to keep my business life and forum life separate when possible.
So in this post we've gone over a few different subjects:
-The interface of the program I use, what you might be working with
-Creating a layered look
-Game development lingo
And I shared:
-What my project looks like at its current time. I plan on swapping more things out later, changing some of the graphics. But I wanted to focus on just one thing in isolation to get someone started or talking, which is something that I'm working on now: 2D environment work.
Feedback on other things you may see in the screenshots is appreciated too, though. Or comments in general.
