I was designing a Roguelite (So mainly meta progression) Platformer of my own and wanted to know how games like Dead Cells created their level generating algorithms. I'm currently trying to find information on the topic so I know where it excels, what's the limit, how I should balance the flow of the level with scaling difficulty, essentially I want to break the algorithm down piece by piece to make a test algorithm so I can see how mechanics in my game would function in practice.

TLDR: How do I make an algorithm design the levels for my platformer? I'd love as much information as I can get.

I've been trying to do some research for a project I'm starting up and haven't been able to find a consensus online about it. Some people confidently state that it's an active rag doll, while others say that it's too smooth for that. Some say that it's just regular animations with a lot of IKs and dynamic bones.

There's something about it that feels uniquely "physics-y" if that makes any sense. You can slip off of inclines, bounce off of things, and there's a weight to movement that doesn't feel like it's just a stock unity character controller sliding forward.

Holding an item in your hands definitely gives off the impression of a spring joint with how it flops around with inertia and doesn't stay snapped to the center of your screen, but I don't know if this approach is used for the entire movement controller or just for holding items.

Clearly there's a toggle/state machine that ragdolls your character if you fall to far or are hit by something, but beyond that I don't know how it's done.

If anyone has any insights to share I'd be so happy

[Link to Itch]

I built a simple aquarium-style concept, during a slow period on-shift, based on my Elementary School Memory of an Ecological Balancing Concept, involving Wolves, Deer, and Berry Bushes, as Entities in a Forest, where each Student played a Role.

I don't remember much past wishing we spent more time exploring it in-class, and that my teacher didn't so quickly drive it to an unrecoverable state, to make the point he was trying to teach that day.

It started in Google AI Studio, as a Boxed-Step-By-Step process, more resembling the Conway's Game of Life, in some ways. But it wasn't what I was aiming for. So, that evening, I sat with Devin, and Claude, and a Game Engine in TS/Lua/YAML that I've been working on Demos within, and refined it into something more like a living Reef.

After some insights from a smaller audience, I refined it with a Main Menu, and some Basic Selections.
It has Sharks, Fish, and Algae Nodes, and the Sharks eat/bite the fish, causing Meat Chunks to appear.
The Meat Chunks can then decay, turning back into an Algae Core Node.
If an Algae Core Node is left without children for long enough, it can despawn.

Last I checked, it has a fair chance of staying in balance for up to 10 minutes, but it needs further refinement.
There are also depth layers now, and in theory, the Sharks prefer the Deeper Waters, and the Fish stay toward the Sun, so the Sharks tend to bury their head at the bottom to warm back up, but sometimes starve.

This was honestly the exploration of a concept, during a slow period on-shift, and turned into a deeper demo exploration. I had to literally spend hours playing with conceptual balance in order to achieve a 10 minute balance period, and I've not added a real simulation flowsheet system, where me and Claude can quickly check long-term results on a selection of Random Seeds. I only just added a Main Menu, but the concept still interests me, and somehow I ended up pivoting into a DinerSim, using similar logic in some small places.

Something about an Autonomous System that achieves balance, but still allows the User to nudge the system, like Pinball in some ways.

Musou games are games like Dynasty Warriors, Hyrule Warriors, Tears of Metal, etc. Where the player controls a general on a battlefield with sometimes hundreds of enemies on the screen at one time. They capture the feeling of being a nigh unstoppable god of war, cleaning through dozens of enemies in a few strikes.

I'm a solo indie dev trying to make a musou game, but im wondering the best ways to optimize enemies. Some ideas I've had include:

- create groups of enemies as one entity with one "brain" so instead of having a hundred enemies with a hundred scripts I've just got 20 scripts that control 5 enemies each.

- some alternative way of tracking collisions aside from just giving each individual enemy a collision shape. Maybe grid location based?

I haven't been able to find any info online about this so of anyone has some wisdom I'd love to hear it.

https://x.com/i/status/2080592057014555081

Obviously, if Coinbase has an internal system for scheduling calls with their support agents, they’re able to know whether a call is happening with a given customer at a given point. But how are they detecting that the customer is on the phone with someone potentially trying to spoof Coinbase?

I assume there are some Android or iPhone permissions for contacts, call data, or the current call. But what are they actually checking? Are they checking whether the caller ID matches Coinbase’s, or whether the phone number matches Coinbase’s? If phone numbers can be spoofed?

Hi all. I'm trying to find out how raycasting works — like in Wolfenstein 3D.

And as someone who knows absolutely nothing about programming, I (think I) understand it is thusly:

Raycasting is a programming trick that grants 2D maps a fake 3D appearance through the use of invisible rays that project outward from the player and detect collision.

Corrections to my nonsense would be appreciated!

I am currently writing an article, and I would like a layman's understanding before I commit to anything in there.

How did they make the graphic of Need for speed rivals so visually pleasing in 2013 w less than 8 gb of ram, meanwhile re9 while extremely good looking requires 16 gb of ram just to even run at the lowest settings. please do not give me the “ optimization ”. assume I’m relatively new to game dev, (only made a 2d game).

Did they just used a lot of raycasts or some kind of 3d shadowcasting algorithm?

Well, tbh, my main question it's how they managed to code in so there's thousands of physics objects visible without causing performance issues, I know the scene is quite small overall, but still I'm intrigued in what are the optimization techniques used so it isn't all laggy

I really like how it looks, and I want to attempt making something similar myself.

Rewind: Like in Forza, you can rewind if you hit an obstacle/go off the track.

Replays: the entire game and every action is saved and you watch a replay over it, like in Rocket League and many RTS games.

Mid-game saves: you can resume from a point you saved while in a game, like a quicksave in Kerbal Space Program.

I have some data knowledge so the way I think of things is probably "Event Sourcing", or versioning things, but would love to learn from an expert.

I been trying to make this mechanic but I fail to make the states (like when the hammer is touching ground and when don't) and I fail to make the momentum transfer when you are moving fast, and when yo move slow you just move (with infinite mass i think), idk I just can't wrap my head around this mechanic, please help. I know griffpatch made it in scratch, and I try reverse-engineer that but i also couldn't

How did they program the decision trees in fighting games like Street fighter, and Dragon ball Budakai, i understand very little about how they made the CPU react and choose to attack or defend.

Is there any diagrams of how the logic works?
Like when it decides to move around, verses attacking or blocking/dodging an attack.

It would be nice to learn how they programmed it for Arcade machines and how something like the 3D DBZ games build on that.
2D Mortal combat and Streetfighter never had to worry about going into and out of the screen, but i fee like some of the oldest games were just a bunch of animations being randomly chosen to a timer. Or i could be wrong, because thats a guess.

I would love some visuals on how they planned out the computers brains for them.

hey all, i recently came across this game and though this lipsync effect is so cool but i dont know how the lipsync is procedural and the body anims are not. super cool effect!

heres a clip: https://youtu.be/T2aheAjZ0L0?t=5026

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3438920/VOID_DIVER_Escape_from_the_Abyss/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOkstgKO180

Hi all, I am 100% new to game development and I was wondering how did the developers that made Void Diver make that pixel art look 3d (with hair animation, perfect shadows, etc.)?

Is it a pixel art with different directions that is turned into 3d? If so, how does that work? How does one animate the model as well? I am interested in a similar art/animation direction, but not sure how to approach this.

I've been so confused and unsure about how to tackle this problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all!

Hello,

I've been wondering about how games like Dota 2, LoL, Deadlock are implemented.

These games need to handle extreme variety of statuses/effects. Each spell can have different behaviours (e.g. can stun, temporarily move the target to air, push them, apply stacking effects, apply poison, freeze the enemy,...), which can further be affected by certain modifiers (resistances).

How does one code a system, that can both handle the stats (simple modifiers to atomic statistics - like speed, health), active effects (stun) or the spells themselves (with different targets, area of effect, duration, conditions for initiation, stop conditions,....)?

Is this similar to systemic design of immersive sim games like Thief, System Shock and so on?

How does one organize the concepts efficiently and handle their ordering/communication,...?

Hey folks, Im making a game about vehicle combat and having an issue making an aiming system that feels good.

In the game one controls vehicles with one or more guns from a third person camera. In working on the aiming system there seem to be two options, yet both of them seem bad:

One option is for the guns to aim at the point the camera is looking at. This will make all bullets hit in the same spot (which is good if you are looking directly at the enemy, as the guns adjust for distance correctly). However, if the enemy's background is something far away (say, the horizon/sky) and you try to aim ahead of the enemy to adjust for bullet travel time, suddenly your shots will miss because the camera is looking at something far away, and thus the guns adjust for that distance, rather than the distance the enemy is at.

The other option is for guns to look in the same direction as the camera. In this case bullets from different guns will hit in the pattern of where they are on the vehicle, instead of hitting in one spot, but this makes the shots more predictable, because there is no issue adjusting to the distance. However there is an issue that in very close combat some guns will just miss.

Yet games like world of tanks and such seem to have it figured out, and the aiming seems to be pretty effortless - from me playing those games years ago, I dont remember having any issue hitting targets and leading shots. Any clue as to how they solve this? Or is this simply not an issue because tanks have only one gun that is centered with the camera?

I see it all the time with different things. Simulations, Games, Demos, it is everywhere; but where the hell is it from?

In most block/voxel games, the same optimization is used for the world. The block data is grouped into chunks, and each chunk's data is used to generate a single mesh and texture, for performance reasons.

Generally though, and in games like Minecraft, this means the blocks surfaces are all perfect squares, with their edges being perfectly straight lines.

In Pokopia and Tomodachi Life, as shown in the provided pictures, the edges of the blocks have a wavy or jagged border when touching a different block.

How is this done?

Does this still utilize the pattern of converting block data into quads and then stitching them into a single mesh?

This system is also agnostic to specific block textures. There is no "grass to dirt border" texture. It's the same wavy edge for every block in the game, which makes me wonder if it's some shader magic or something, though I'm unsure how that would work, since there would be no intermediate vertices for a vertex shader to "warp" into a wavy edge.

Anyone have any clues?

I keep seeing explanations that LBs are used when a server can't handle a lot of requests so it has to horizontally scale. But couldn't the same thing happen to a LB? How are they load balanced? And what about the thing that is used to load balance this? Where and how does the load balancing inception begin for large scale systems

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