CAG Amateur Developer's Thread

Lieutenant Dan said:
Is Ludum Dare 32 on anyone's radar? http://ludumdare.com/compo/

I am very likely to participate; it will be my first jam! My goal is to have some fun and make a tiny game that's not a total embarrassment :)
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Dr Sasquatch said:
It wasn't on my radar, but now I will try to make something! Thanks for bringing it up.

It will be my second jam!
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If you both end up participating post a link or something here so we can find you there. Do either of you plan to stream?

 
Ooh sweet.  Wish I could enter this one, but my weekend is looking pretty busy.  Hopefully next time I'll be able to join.

I entered Ludum Dare 30 last year as my first time doing a game jam, and that was a lot of fun, even though I didn't get to spend much time on it (I think around 10 hours in total).  It's fun to experiment with new ideas you haven't tried before, like random level generation in my case.

Good luck to you guys who are entering.  Remember that Titan Souls started as a Ludum Dare 28 game, so game jams prototypes can sometimes lead into big successes.

 
Palinn said:
If you both end up participating post a link or something here so we can find you there. Do either of you plan to stream?
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I don't plan to stream this one, but maybe next time as I'll be a LD veteran. :p

If anyone out there wants to team up for a future LD, let me know. I'm entering the Compo this time (48hrs, DIY).

 
Lieutenant Dan said:
I don't plan to stream this one, but maybe next time as I'll be a LD veteran. :p

If anyone out there wants to team up for a future LD, let me know. I'm entering the Compo this time (48hrs, DIY).
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How'd the competition go for you this time?

And I'd be down for teaming up on a future jam. :) Which language(s) do you use? I've been thinking about using HTML5/JavaScript for future jams, since in-browser games seem to get the most plays. And also because online multiplayer stuff would be a cool option (Node.js makes that really easy).

 
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I'm starting to wish Ludum Dare would have been a few weeks later.  My game framework (built on top of PhyreEngine) is almost ready to use, and a game jam would have been a great way to give it a test run, if it would qualify (can't remember off the top of my head what the restrictions are for pre-existing code and closed-source code).

In any case, I'm almost at the point where I can actually start implementing game logic. :)  My first project with this engine and framework is going to just be a port of a puzzle game I released earlier, but I think porting a previous project is a nice way to ease into a new engine.

Beyond that, I've been working on a reusable (and easily moddable) 2D level editor for my future games.  I'm using nw.js, which is nice for small apps if you have a lot of experience with HTML/JavaScript/CSS (it basically turns web apps into desktop apps, and offers additional features to JavaScript like file io and, well, anything Node.js supports).  The goal is to create something similar to Tiled but 1. having a map format that's really simple to parse, and 2. being really easy to modify/branch off for game-specific features.

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Sir_Fragalot said:
Never heard of Phyre Engine, is it any good and is it free?
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PhyreEngine is an initiative started by Sony's research division. It is open-source, and free to use for any registered Sony developer. It is primarily targeted at Sony platforms (Vita, PS3, PS4, etc...) but also operates on the PC. A fairly solid option for cross-platform developers wanting to target PC/Sony consoles.

I'm still sticking to Unity.

 
Sir_Fragalot said:
Never heard of Phyre Engine, is it any good and is it free?
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It's very good in my opinion, and it's free as long as you're licensed with Sony. As Richard said, it's a Sony-developed engine for PS4/PS3/Vita/PC/Android. It's a "build once, deploy anywhere" sort of thing. Great if your goal is to target all of those platforms (or even just one with the potential for others), as you don't have to spend time porting between different platforms. It means working with C++, which isn't my favorite language to work with anymore, but otherwise it's excellent. It's more of a graphics (+sound/input/trophies/whatever) engine than a full-blown game engine, so you generally have much more control over everything than you would with something like Unreal.

I've tried Unity, which I think works on all of those platforms now, but I could never really get into the vibe of working with a mostly visual game engine after a decade of writing my game engines from the ground up. Guess I'll always prefer graphics engines over ready-made game engines. It usually seems like I'd spend more time jerking those types of engines around, trying to fit them to whatever needs might be outside the typical use case, than anything else, so I err on the side of flexibility.

 
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Josh1billion said:
I've tried Unity, which I think works on all of those platforms now, but I could never really get into the vibe of working with a mostly visual game engine after a decade of writing my game engines from the ground up. Guess I'll always prefer graphics engines over ready-made game engines. It usually seems like I'd spend more time jerking those types of engines around, trying to fit them to whatever needs might be outside the typical use case, than anything else, so I err on the side of flexibility.
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It's an interesting quandary. It took me a while to get into Unity as well. And I can definitely understand why a veteran developer familiar with lower-level systems and traditional OOP structures would find Unity difficult to get into. I had only been working with an OOP extension-based engine for a year or two (Flixel), and switching over to a component-based system like Unity still took me quite a while. It requires some mental gymnastics to move over from full-on OOP to component architecture.

The nice thing is that once you've really gotten it, it becomes possible to integrate both approaches in Unity. After years of practice, I've finally reached that point and my development is really taking off now. While Unity is mainly focused on the visual editor and component-architecture, it fully allows for more traditional OOP techniques. Getting the two to work together is surprisingly easy once you get the hang of it.

Quick example, I recently put together a basic "tile" system. The base of the tiles is a standard Unity component, written in the standard style. I integrated a few "tool" functions for adding links to other tiles in that base component. But then I used classic OOP extension to make another script that was a "square" tile. I used the tool functions I had written in the base class to pre-populate the square tile class with the standard eight tile links you would expect from a diagonal-capable board-game setup. Then I created a separate editor script for a Unity-editor window, and put the tools in it for creating a 2-dimensional board made up of standard square tiles. It takes the desired width and height as arguments, as well as a GameObject reference in case you want to use a PreFab, and creates a standard 2D board at the press of a button. It even creates all of the links between the tiles automatically.

Thanks to the OOP structure I used, the base Tile class becomes much more flexible. I used it to make square tiles, but I could also use it to make hex tiles, or tiles with any number of links to other tiles. (for more path-based board games) And since I didn't bother trying to integrate the graphics with the tiles, it can be re-used for a huge number of different game types. Applied correctly, the Unity way of doing things can actually be hugely flexible.

I don't blame you for sticking to Phyre Engine. A lot of coders insist on have source-code access, and that's one thing that Unity still obscures from it's basic users. I'm more of a high-level script monkey, so I don't mind.

 
In my search for project management software, I've started trying out Orangescrum, which seems promising.

Its free version is self-hosted, but it's a simple PHP/MySQL application, so installation is easy if you're familiar with that stack.  Seems to have significantly more features than Basecamp Classic at first glance, and the interface is really nice, too.  It supports multiple users and projects (unlike Basecamp Classic's free version), time-tracking + time estimation, and it also allows you to organize tasks into milestones.  Not a bad feature set at all.

My only gripe so far is that it's painfully slow at times: loading a page is often taking me about 3 to 5 seconds.  It's running on my local machine, so you'd expect pages to load very quickly.  On the bright side, it does some caching, so returning to a recently-visited task from the task list (and vice versa) is instant.

If anyone has any other recommendations for free project management software, I'd still be interested to hear them.  I'm going to try to bear with the lag issues and use Orangescrum for my current project in the meantime.

 
Over half of Super Blackout's game logic is ported over now, so the game is generally playable. :)  Still full of a bunch of graphical glitches from things I commented out and have to re-enable.  Trying to write a wrapper for the text rendering engine now that's more consistent with my style, then audio, save data, and it'll be a full package.. at which point I start adding the new features, redoing the graphics, and maybe adding some more polish.

 
Josh1billion said:
Still full of a bunch of graphical glitches from things I commented out and have to re-enable.
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Whooof, I'm no stranger to that sort of porting project. I once tried to port the Flixel AS3 engine over to SFML for C#. Graphical glitches and collision glitches were the biggest hang-ups for me on that project. Good luck on ironing out the bugs. Always a big part of any development project, especially ports.

My work on my Unity lip-sync thingie is going well. A bit slower than I would like, but life intervenes as always. I've re-factored it to work with Unity's native animation format again. I figured out a way to extract the timing data from those files and integrate it into the playback I was working on. Keeping things Unity-native has always been a focus of this project, so I'm pleased I was able to pull this off, even if it means rolling back some of the work I had already done.

On the side, I've also been refining the tile system I wrote about. I added some Gizmo drawing to it, so when you select a tile in the editor the links it has to other tiles show up as colored lines. The color of the line provides the user with information about the link. One-way links are yellow, two-way links are green, and a link that's been designated as the primary link shows up as purple. I also refined the basic structure of the tile class to make things cleaner and more efficient. Next I'm going to create some prefabs of the tile for different board types, and a quick window tool for generating basic boards. (again, all to play nice with the general approach Unity takes with this sort of thing)

 
Richard Kain said:
Whooof, I'm no stranger to that sort of porting project. I once tried to port the Flixel AS3 engine over to SFML for C#. Graphical glitches and collision glitches were the biggest hang-ups for me on that project. Good luck on ironing out the bugs. Always a big part of any development project, especially ports.
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Hah yeah, porting can be a pain. This port is taking me particularly long. I ported this game once already (from Java/Android to C#/PSMobile), and that only took a few days or so. The game itself also only originally took a week or two to develop. But this port is taking a long time, largely because it's my first time developing for a "real" console.

Your mention of lip syncing reminds me of a really great article I read some years ago, I think on Gamasutra. I wish I could find it again, because it sounded like something that would produce convincing results with very minimal effort. I think the author's technique involved controlling the character's mouth based on the volume and/or pitch of the sound file.

As of tonight, I have Super Blackout officially running on a PS Vita devkit, woo. The game is playable but still requires plenty of work.

 
After a long month of replacing nearly all of the graphics and fixing all known bugs, my new enhanced PS Vita port of Super Blackout is complete.   Just submitted it to Sony this week.  It's probably going to take more than one submission to meet all of the requirements, since this is my first time going through the process, but we'll see what happens.  It looks like a release around September is likely. :)

As soon as that's out of the way, my next agenda is to get back into my 2D platformer that I started on PlayStation Mobile.  In regards to gameplay mechanics, it's similar to a freeware game I released six years ago.  My goal is to run with that same concept (run-and-jump platformer with a level-up system dictating jump damage and health) and improve the parts that people didn't like (the art being the biggest turn-off for people, and the high difficulty being another).  If anyone wants to check that game out and let me know what you liked and didn't like, I'm all ears, as feedback on that game will help me with my new platformer.

 
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Josh1billion said:
After a long month of replacing nearly all of the graphics and fixing all known bugs, my new enhanced PS Vita port of Super Blackout is complete. Just submitted it to Sony this week.
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Awesome! Congratulations! I hope the submission process goes smoothly, and can't wait to see your game on PSN. Post a link here at CAG when it goes live and I'll throw some $ your way.

My own development has been going a little slowly. My family was blessed with two children recently, a niece and a nephew. (from two different siblings) So that's been eating up a lot of my time recently. On the plus side, I have been able to get a fair amount of work done on the "Tile" class that I was working on. This is good, as the Tile class relates much more directly to gameplay than most of my other recent projects. I haven't posted anything to the Unity Asset Store yet, but the tool itself is already in a usable state.

 
Richard Kain said:
Awesome! Congratulations! I hope the submission process goes smoothly, and can't wait to see your game on PSN. Post a link here at CAG when it goes live and I'll throw some $ your way.

My own development has been going a little slowly. My family was blessed with two children recently, a niece and a nephew. (from two different siblings) So that's been eating up a lot of my time recently. On the plus side, I have been able to get a fair amount of work done on the "Tile" class that I was working on. This is good, as the Tile class relates much more directly to gameplay than most of my other recent projects. I haven't posted anything to the Unity Asset Store yet, but the tool itself is already in a usable state.
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Thanks man. :) Initial submission didn't meet all of the technical requirements (as I expected for a first submission), but I'm basically one requirement away from resubmission now, which should be all that's needed for approval unless I overlooked something else. Likely a release in early October now, as there'll be a bit of a time buffer between approval and release.

Good luck on your project, too. It can be pretty tough getting back into a project after some downtime. My next project will be like that, having taken a break from it for months to get Super Blackout ported.

 
Josh1billion said:
Thanks man. :) Initial submission didn't meet all of the technical requirements (as I expected for a first submission), but I'm basically one requirement away from resubmission now, which should be all that's needed for approval unless I overlooked something else. Likely a release in early October now, as there'll be a bit of a time buffer between approval and release.

Good luck on your project, too. It can be pretty tough getting back into a project after some downtime. My next project will be like that, having taken a break from it for months to get Super Blackout ported.
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Early congrats! I use my Vita quite a bit and am always looking for new games. I will check out Super Blackout as soon as it is available.

With the demise of PSM will you be reworking your 2D platformer strictly for the Vita? Do you use the same programming language for both platforms?

 
Palinn said:
Early congrats! I use my Vita quite a bit and am always looking for new games. I will check out Super Blackout as soon as it is available.

With the demise of PSM will you be reworking your 2D platformer strictly for the Vita? Do you use the same programming language for both platforms?
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Thanks. :) I'm going to port the platformer over to C++/PhyreEngine, using framework code I wrote for Super Blackout's port as a base to speed things up. PS Vita will be the primarily-intended platform, possibly with a PC release at the same time or soon after, and then hopefully a PS4 version once I can afford the hardware for that.

edit with another topic: I gave a talk at a conference today about multiplayer HTML5 game programming with Node.js & Socket.io. Pretty nervewracking, as it was my first time doing a talk at a conference (hell, my second time even attending a conference), but it was a really fun experience. Bigger turnout than I expected, with almost every chair being taken, so I estimate somewhere north of 100 people showed up.. lots of pressure. Most of my presentation involved a live-coding of multiplayer pong, and it took a little longer than I expected, so I was about 20 minutes short of finishing the project in the one-hour timeframe. Feedback still seemed positive overall, though. :)

 
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Not much to report at the moment. I've been taking it a little easy with my current Unity3D development. Taking a little break on my lip-sync project while I deal with stuff in my daily life.

That doesn't mean I haven't been keeping my hand in. As a bit of an exercise, I constructed a 3D model to simulate the effect of a CRT monitor. Here's a quick pick from within the Unity editor.



The latest standard version of Unity3D (5.0) makes the render-to-texture feature standard, even for free users. By utilizing this feature, and applying the rendered texture to a 3D model like this one, you can simulate a curved screen when rendering games. This is especially useful as an extra rendering option for pixel-style, low-resolution games.

Also, in a recent Steam sale, I picked up a copy of TyranoBuilder. It's a simple visual-novel editor. I poked around that for a little bit, and found it to be quite easy to use. A good option for someone who wanted to make a story-focused game with little to no coding.

 
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Super Blackout was approved! :D Release date is October 13, 2015.

Now I'm setting up a development environment on my new laptop so I can start getting my platformer back in action.  That started as a PS Mobile project too, but will be released on PS Vita and PC (and maybe PS4.. depends entirely on whether I have a PS4 devkit at the time of release).

Speaking of development environments, you guys should check out Microsoft's BizSpark program if your company is new enough (founded within the last 2 or 3 years I think).  Microsoft offers really great development tools and software for free if you can prove that you've registered as a company recently.  Windows 10 Enterprise Edition, Visual Studio 2013 and 2015, etc.. all free. :)

 
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Didn't want to make a separate thread for this, so thought I'd mention it here. Today Apple announced that they are releasing an updated Apple TV in about a month. And after several years, they are finally going to be giving it an App store. Now, anyone used to developing for iOS devices will be able to port their software over to an Apple device designed to play nice with a TV screen.

This is only a baby-step. The new Apple TV will be coming with an upgraded remote, but not a traditional game-pad. So the types of games that will work well on it are going to be somewhat limited. It will feature full support for third-party game-pads, and that's good. But the de-facto controller for a system is always the one you really want to target.

The big positive from this development is that smaller indie developers will have another viable store-front on which to peddle their wares. And that's always good.

 
Josh1billion said:
Forgot to post this in this thread, but you guys might have seen it already since I posted a CAG blog post:

Super Blackout, my PS Vita game is finally out as of Tuesday of last week. :) $4.99 / 67.9 mb.

Not sure whether the link will work, because CAG's affiliate redirection was messing it up last time I checked, but maybe it'll work now:

https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/super-blackout/cid=UP0770-PCSE00784_00-SUPERBLACKOUT001

Screenshot:

AZ7kqBT.png
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Congrats! If I ever get a PS TV or Vita I'll be sure to buy it.

 
Still chugging away at my platformer.  A few weeks ago, I decided to scrap my HTML5-based level editor and instead just customize Tiled, adding my own game-specific features.  Took a little while to learn my way around the source code to do the things I needed it to do, but it was totally worth it.  I branched two versions: one for creating levels, and one for creating world maps.

 
Didn't know this thread existed, so first post time.  

I studied computer science and game design while in high school/college, so I've been making random crap for at least 7 or so years now.  I've experimented with Unity and some more hardcore things like OpenGL while in school.  Started on 3.5.7, moved to 4 for the majority, and have dabbled a bit with 5 for some game jams.  I like Unity; very handy as a tool, but I also want to learn Unreal after releasing the current game.  

I finally decided to try releasing an actual game this year- FreqFlux, which was pushed through Steam Greenlight in October thanks to Groupees.   I read a ton of feedback about FreqFlux and most of it was negative about the game being an endless runner.  So I decided to throw away 90% of the project and start mostly from scratch.  A lot of the assets and work for the prototype weren't very polished anyway, so it's not a huge loss.  

Lately I'm working on a new headliner mode that is finally getting to the point where the mode is playable, but with placeholder assets.   Still talking to the artists about new music/sfx and sprites to use since we're now actually going to be on Steam and I'd like to be proud of everything on display.  Also, in talks with a couple lawyers about trademarks and stuff like that.   Do any of you have experience with the legal aspects of games?  

I'll come back in a few days with the stuff that is new with FreqFlux.  I haven't recorded a new gameplay video in a long time, so I'll probably do that, too.

 
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I really like the nice little positive community we have here, but it's sometimes inactive, so I ask: what other game dev communities do you guys visit?  Most of the ones I've seen in the past ~5 years (ever since the "indie boom" started) have been full of bitter people who are seemingly just there to tell others how to make their games.

 
Where I live, here in upstate NY, we have both a branch of the IGDA and our own GameSpace.  While the IGDA tends to provide a monthly meeting for presentations and a way for game developers, both professional, indie, and educators to meet, the GameSpace hosts a co-working environment where devs can work, collaborate, teach, learn and play games.  From what I understand, there are GameSpace all over, they just don't get much exposure, so people don't know they exist.

 
Hmm interesting.  Gamespace especially sounds really cool.  It doesn't look like my city has much going on for local game dev initiatives, aside from a Meetup group.  I should check that out sometime.

 
Josh1billion said:
I really like the nice little positive community we have here, but it's sometimes inactive
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Yeah, I've been busy with a lot of other stuff recently, and have had to put my game development on hold. Very sad, but life has a way of imposing. For communities, I try to attend the meetings of my local chapter of the IGDA. (independent game developers association) It's a good way of networking with the other local talent in the game development scene, and is generally a good way to talk shop.

As far as attitudes go, I've never worked in the game industry proper, and have always tried to maintain a certain amount of balance with my hobbies and the rest of my life. (part of why I haven't been developing recently) So my outlook on this hobby is actually pretty rosy. Because my livelihood has never hinged on success, it is easier for me to be upbeat. I don't actually have any skin in this game.

 
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Richard Kain said:
So my outlook on this hobby is actually pretty rosy. Because my livelihood has never hinged on success, it is easier for me to be upbeat. I don't actually have any skin in this game.
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That's a great place to be. I'm in a sort of similar place myself: I work full-time during the day, so the risks aren't huge if a game does worse than expected, but I'm trying to go full-time in a few years, so there's enough pressure to keep me motivated.

 
I took about 2-3 weeks of a break from my 2D platformer recently in order to develop a small web app.  Coming back to the game afterward was nice in that it allowed me to take a fresh set of eyes to it, and it reaffirmed that I really like how the physics turned out.

All of the significant mechanics have now been programmed, so that's nice to have out of the way.  But I ran it on the Vita last night after doing only PC builds for a while, and yikes.. it appears I have some memory leaks to address.  I knew I had at least one memory leak backlogged in my to-do list, but there are some bigger-than-expected side effects that happen when entering/exiting a level back-and-forth rapidly.  Urgh.  Really hoping it's only related to the one memory leak I'm already planning to fix and not something that's going to be harder to track down.

For that reason, I'm starting to consider switching to a visual editor like Game Maker for my next project, now that it supports all modern systems except the 3DS.  I have a strong distaste for using visual editors (and have ever since I switched away from Game Maker for traditional programming in 2003 or so) due to the friction they tend to introduce whenever you want to to do something outside of the absolute norm, but not having to worry about memory leaks or low-level asset management would be a nice change, and being able to add XBox One as a target platform wouldn't hurt, either.  I tried Unity again and found it as clunky and obstructive to my workflow as I remembered it, but hopefully Game Maker won't be as bad.  We'll see how that pans out...

I also decided to go all-in with my current game and do 100% of everything this time around.  I've been doing all of the programming/art/design since day one, but I was 50/50 on doing music or hiring someone else.  This'll be the first time I've composed music for one of my games since 2008 or 2009, but the stuff I've produced so far for this project isn't too bad.  It'll be nice to be able to step back and see something that's 100% my own again. :)

 
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Looks like this thread needs some activity, didn't notice it until now. Over a decade ago, my intentions after getting out of high school and going to college was to get into making games/software. While in college I was also working full time, started a family, which after a while the full time job caused a domino effect in a negative way with all that. I did finish college for my bachelors of science digital entertainment and game design degree but never made anything worthy during that time. Going to college in the end wasn't anything I expected it to be at the time but if I were a high school student going to college now, you will most likely get the experience I was expecting.

I'd like to make use of the many tools/assets I have bought over the years, especially most of the things I bought for Unity. Tools like 2D Action RPG Starter Kit, 2D Toolkit, Adventure Creator, Isometric Shooter, PlayMaker, UFPS. Seeing that my purchases date to September 2013, I'd really like to dedicate some time this year to make use of Unity and choosing to make use of one or two of these tools. When I was younger, I had made some games with Clickteam's The Games Factory. One of which I might end up remaking, while some concepts I made were based on intellectual property (obviously wasn't planning on profiting on the ideas, I was a young kid just having fun with the things I loved). All my graphics at the time were made with MS Paint, as I didn't have access to Photoshop back then....lol...

My interest has always been with programming. Over the years I have shifted away from that to in the graphic design department. I'm not as passionate about it as most and really don't have a portfolio up of work that I'm proud of. I rather hand off some work to my "competition".

With that said, I'd like to refresh myself with making games. At least start working on a few simple games and eventually work my way up to making games based on indie films by indie film makers I personally know. I'd really like to think outside of the box as most people where I live like to copy things I have presented in the past, and don't think anyone will take on making games as they like to do things as easy as possible. College was of no use when it came to programming, it was mainly 3DS Max, Flash, HTML, and Unreal Engine. I was expecting to have courses on learning many different programming languages, while in the end, the college thought Flash was going to be the bread and butter for paying for our degrees. Not with people wanting to kill it.

 
Hey guys—anyone doing the Global Game Jam next weekend? I signed up for my local meeting spot (not to imply there's a great scene where I live; it's pretty kinda dead).

I'm setting up a Google Hangout right now for a warmup mini-jam. Loosely organized. In fact, I don't know if anyone in my local Facebook group is going to join. I plan to go at it most of the weekend, but I'll be coming and going from time to time.

Point is, if anyone wants to make a small game this weekend, feel free to join this Hangout: https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/cadmiumlab.com/ggj2016warmup

 
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It be nice to get out to the one in Nashville this weekend but I been down in the dumps, so not sure if I'll be of any help. Got to get my motivation back to making anything at all.

 
A New Challenger!

Lumberyard Game Engine

Quick summary: Amazon has announced that they are throwing their hat into the ring for the growing competition between third-party game engine developers. They have not only announced, but also provided access to, a new game engine that they are calling "Lumberyard." This engine is based on licensed tech that they acquired from Crytek, so much of the back-end rendering will be very similar to the CryEngine. The engine is free-to-use for anyone, and even provides access to the engine's C++ source code. The only cost comes when you want to take advantage of Amazon web-service integration, which is extensively tied into the engine's on-line feature and multiplayer support.

This could be an attractive engine alternative for smaller developers, especially those working on single-player experiences. Any standard single-player game will be able to use the engine for a commercial project completely free of charge. The source-code access will be a very attractive feature for tech-focused developers looking to customize things to their own liking. And the graphical capabilities of the engine will make it a decent alternative to Unreal Engine 4. (currently the go-to engine for high-end visuals)

Amazon has their work cut out for them, the middleware market is flush with capable competitors. And it is fairly clear that they intend this engine to be a gateway for luring developers into utilizing Amazon web-services. All the same, I can't fault the approach they are taking with it. They are being clever about it, and the overall package seems fairly appealing. I'll be sticking to Unity for the time being, but I will also be watching to see how Lumberyard progresses.

 
So is this aimed at mobile games for the Amazon app store or full blown PC games?  I've read some horror stories from devs about Amazon and their app store.  As a Fire phone user, I love the phone, but have to sideload Google Play to access a lot of popular apps.  

 
FoxyPie said:
So is this aimed at mobile games for the Amazon app store or full blown PC games?
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An excellent question. At the moment, this engine doesn't seem targeted at mobile at all. In fact, I don't think it even has the ability to release games on mobile platforms. This will likely be a factor that holds it back from early adoption by some developers. This engine is, for the time being, focused on PC game development, and can also release titles for the Xbox One and PS4. It's primarily aimed at high-end graphical titles for the current high-end gaming scene. (PCs and current-gen consoles) This makes sense, as it is based off the CryEngine, which also focused on those platforms.

Amazon is apparently planning on going their own direction with future updates to the engine. So it is entirely possible that we will see more platforms supported in the future. But for now, this is NOT a mobile-friendly engine. If mobile devices are your bread and butter, you would be well served to look elsewhere.

 
Josh1billion said:
Lumberyard sounds really cool. The lack of Vita support is the only thing stopping me from giving it a try.
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Yeah, I thought you might be interested, as it targets most of the same targets that you favor. I seriously think we will see additional platforms added to the engine as time goes by. There's simply too much value in cross-platform support these days, and most of Lumberyard's competitors already support numerous platforms.

I'm not sure I would hold my breath for Vita support. You will probably be sticking with the Phyre Engine for the time being. Not a lot of engines are going to be targeting the Vita going forward. Very unfortunate, but what can you do?

 
FoxyPie said:
I was going to ask, how viable is the Vita market at this point? Doesn't seem to be a super popular platform.
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It's a great platform. It just isn't very commercially viable at the moment. It hasn't been getting the marketing support it needs to keep its head afloat, and Sony has been mismanaging it for a while now. Because of all of this, development support for it has dropped off sharply in the West. It still gets solid support from Japan, and from indie devs. But exclusive development for the Vita is scarce right now. While there's nothing wrong with developing for the Vita, I wouldn't expect to make big bucks on that platform.

 
Richard Kain said:
Yeah, I thought you might be interested, as it targets most of the same targets that you favor. I seriously think we will see additional platforms added to the engine as time goes by. There's simply too much value in cross-platform support these days, and most of Lumberyard's competitors already support numerous platforms.

I'm not sure I would hold my breath for Vita support. You will probably be sticking with the Phyre Engine for the time being. Not a lot of engines are going to be targeting the Vita going forward. Very unfortunate, but what can you do?
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Yup, looks that way. PhyreEngine will be my mainstay for a while.

FoxyPie said:
I was going to ask, how viable is the Vita market at this point? Doesn't seem to be a super popular platform.
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In my opinion, it's a great platform to publish on. Sales-wise, I don't have much to compare it to sales-wise except Android, because all of my other games have been freeware games or freemium web games.. but Super Blackout has sold really well on Vita for such a small-scoped game, and barely at all on Android, so there's at least that small anecdote for comparison.

The Vita doesn't have as large an install base as its main competitor the 3DS, but the demographic is really different and more intent on supporting games released on the platform. Vita owners really, really love their Vitas - myself included. Vita owners are very embracing of digital distribution, and they're very pro-indie -- the most pro-indie userbase out there, in my opinion. There's a collective attitude in the community of "support the developers who support the Vita." So while the install base might be 1/5th as large as another platform like the 3DS, that doesn't mean it will only sell 1/5th as well. I speculate that my game would have sold far fewer units on 3DS than on Vita.

 
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Josh1billion said:
Vita owners really, really love their Vitas - myself included. Vita owners are very embracing of digital distribution, and they're very pro-indie -- the most pro-indie userbase out there, in my opinion.
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All true. I love my Vita, as well as my PlayStation TV. And one of the things I love about them the most is the indie support and solid ports of indie games. It's been a great platform for games of that style. I've purchased numerous indie games digitally for my Vita, and fully intend to continue that trend.

I would like to be pushing more for my personal development, but life continues to get in my way. I'm house-sitting at the moment, and I'm performing some AV services for my family that are eating up quite a bit of time. It's always the way. On the plus side, I'm planning on upgrading my personal web-site soon with some tutorials. If I can just scrounge up the time...

 
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