My first release!

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AleksiyCODE
Posts: 32
Joined: September 21st, 2019, 8:47 pm

My first release!

Post by AleksiyCODE » April 23rd, 2020, 9:57 pm

Hey everyone!
Gonna write a bit of an essay here, so if you are interested in the game, but not in my experience, feel free to skip everything but download link.
Google drive with a .zip https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... lsRLLV6L8P
Source code: https://gitlab.com/AleksiyCODE/riftedtimes
Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/wuTNtIP
There is a tutorial, achievements and everything, so feel free to proceed (but read tutorial first).
I would love to hear feedback on the game and the code!

Now, about the journey. Last autumn I entered a university (System programming focused speciality). We were taught in school the basics of Pascal and some other simple things. By the end of first year I realized that I've learned very little (just c++ arrays, loop and variables. That's it). By that moment i realized, that the university will not teach me anything. So i vent to youtube and well, found chili! It was very surprising to me, that there are channels about programming with such amount of content. I could not really decide what arc to watch though. So I started from the very beginning (7 year old series, if i'm not mistaken) and oh boi did i not regret that. Even now, having watched all videos I still find the old ones the funniest. Also the attitude of not valuing both your time and the time of your viewers was a unique experience! And so i pushed trough old c++ arcs, Project Twin, HUGS - very top notch, new beginner series, a part of intermediate and at this point it was the time for me to start coding. No kidding, I did not code a lot throughout all these arcs. I only coded through old beginner myself. There were some small other project, like a clicker for Diablo (for a friend) and a cryptography encoder/decoder. I really did not feel the need to code, because the information was flowing in my brain extremely smoothly, and, of course, watching similar stuff 2 times (old->new series) helped.

Than I took a summer break and after it was over, It was time to write some code. I began developing the idea of a game. It was hard to tell, how much ambition is ok, so I went all out and designed a huge game and decided that a year might be enough to make it.At first, the game used 2D engine. Then I was satisfied with how skills and HP worked and decided that it is time for 3D fundamentals. In 2 days, I rushed through the series to get some idea of what was going on. No doubt, a lot of info went over my head, but it was ok, because now I had to work with these new code and concepts. It was very painful. I still remember trying to make a model always face the camera... At last, the project was finished. The only thing that I did not get to work with were shaders (they were really scary). The game worked, but it was not pretty. I tried setting up basic DirectX engine, but goddamn assimp... I just could not get it to work, and it broke me. It was time to take a break. (git profile https://gitlab.com/AleksiyCODE tells the story better). The problem was the fact, that engine used vectorcall, and i was compiling assimp with stdcall. After this point everything went alright and I worked just as hard as before. My friend drew all sprites and models for me https://www.artstation.com/nevergood and helped balancing and testing the game.

Now about Chili and his outstanding channel. The humor always keeps videos fresh and crispy, and the content is quite concentrated so watching a video never feel like a choir or a waste of time. One of the best aspects for me personally is the autonomy of content. Even if you had no experience before encountering Chili, in case you diligently follow through tutorials you will a lot of the times think: "Damn, he writes some real cool code her! W8 a sec, I can write code just like him!". I think this also happens because a great attention is given to stuff like the culture of coding etc.
The only place where the concept is broken is DynamicConstant with template metaprogramming. I can see that it will take quite a lot of time and effort to explain the whole technique, so it's not for me to decide whether it is worth it or not.
So yea, 95% of my knowledge comes from Chili's videos and it is enough to make a game! Right now, I don't really feel like I know super a lot, but I feel quite confident in the things I do know.

I suppose, now is the time for me to get a real job. Idk, but I do feel worthy of being a junior C++ developer. And in perspective, becoming a game developer in a big company, or maybe a game engine developer would sure be nice!

So yea, thank you Chili and thank you, people on the forum and discord for being an awesome community!
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WilsonHuang
Posts: 44
Joined: February 13th, 2019, 3:23 am

Re: My first release!

Post by WilsonHuang » April 24th, 2020, 1:25 am

Hi, Aleksiy
I play your game, and it was amazing!!
I wonder how long did you take when you start to learn until you finish the game?

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AleksiyCODE
Posts: 32
Joined: September 21st, 2019, 8:47 pm

Re: My first release!

Post by AleksiyCODE » April 24th, 2020, 8:22 am

@WilsonHuang. I'm really glad you enjoyed the game!
I'd say that I started to learn programming about 5 years ago at the school, but only last half a year I worked hard.
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krautersuppe
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Joined: September 14th, 2015, 10:58 pm
Location: Istanbul

Re: My first release!

Post by krautersuppe » April 25th, 2020, 10:02 am

alexiy_code_times_error.png
alexiy_code_times_error.png (32.25 KiB) Viewed 4569 times
I cant run it. Would you rollback it to d3d9 or 10.1 compatible version?
Or just make a let's play - that would also do.
DSU
Discord: dsu1, GitHub: https://github.com/DSpUz

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AleksiyCODE
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Re: My first release!

Post by AleksiyCODE » April 25th, 2020, 4:59 pm

@krautersuppe
Hmm, rolling back to D3D9 doesn't seem to be a trivial task. But I think that making a D3D9 and D3D12 versions of the game will be a valuable experience.
For now, making a let's play sounds good. I should be able to make one in a day or two.
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AleksiyCODE
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Re: My first release!

Post by AleksiyCODE » April 27th, 2020, 10:31 am

@krautersuppe
Ok, so there is now a german let's play (not mine) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn2sX6Dg1-8&t=0s
And i made a one run video without commentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbxEV01NjM4
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Slidy
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Joined: September 9th, 2017, 1:19 pm

Re: My first release!

Post by Slidy » April 29th, 2020, 4:27 am

Amazing work :o

The game looks extremely polished. The art and sound effects are great, and I love the little camera movements when you do an attack. The game mechanics are also fast paced and exciting, exactly my type of game :D

Some things I think you could improve:
- I think you could pick a better font that fits with the theme of the game a bit more
- Adding a little more variety from room to room, e.g. different enemy types, different background visuals
- Having some kind of boss every 10 or so ghouls, when defeated they can unlock more skills that let them make it even farther. This adds some progression to the game that keeps player interested in replaying.

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AleksiyCODE
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Joined: September 21st, 2019, 8:47 pm

Re: My first release!

Post by AleksiyCODE » April 29th, 2020, 7:55 am

@Slidy
Thanks! Polishing the game was one of the main objectives)
Btw the game was inspired by Slay The Spire. The big goal was to have explorable floors with enemies, loot and bosses. And to have a lot more skills and be able to build your own skillset (like deck in StS). Also having different characters with different abilities and different controls - like instead of WASD, having SZX for one hand and NM for the other. And the essence of the game would have been Time - the only resource, but you can do literary anything for it - heal, upgrade, buy, explore. And the more of it you have in store - the more time you have to think during your turn.
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albinopapa
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Re: My first release!

Post by albinopapa » April 29th, 2020, 8:36 am

Also having different characters with different abilities and different controls - like instead of WASD, having SZX for one hand and NM for the other.
You will have to be careful of certain key combinations. Some keyboards don't handle certain combinations very well. Mechanical keyboards as far as I can remember don't have this limitation as each key is it's own 'register'.
If you think paging some data from disk into RAM is slow, try paging it into a simian cerebrum over a pair of optical nerves. - gameprogrammingpatterns.com

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AleksiyCODE
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Re: My first release!

Post by AleksiyCODE » April 29th, 2020, 2:23 pm

albinopapa wrote:
April 29th, 2020, 8:36 am
Also having different characters with different abilities and different controls - like instead of WASD, having SZX for one hand and NM for the other.
You will have to be careful of certain key combinations. Some keyboards don't handle certain combinations very well. Mechanical keyboards as far as I can remember don't have this limitation as each key is it's own 'register'.
Oh yea, I noticed in when played osu!mania on mother's laptop. I needed to hold down SDFJKL and space at the same time, but the keyboard only read SDFJKL.
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