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1500 questions
98
votes
4 answers
How should one person do game audio?
Most game development (game design, art, programming, etc.) can be done by one person with relatively little equipment:
A game designer needs a pencil and paper, an artist Photoshop or Paint, a programmer a laptop and compiler.
Sound is different:…
Gustavo Maciel
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96
votes
12 answers
What data-type should I use for in-game currency?
In a simple business simulation game (built in Java + Slick2D), should a player's current amount of money be stored as a float or an int, or something else?
In my use-case, most transactions will use cents ($0.50, $1.20, etc.), and simple interest…
Lucas Tulio
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95
votes
9 answers
Why do we move the world instead of the camera?
I heard that in an OpenGL game what we do to let the player move is not to move the camera but to move the whole world around.
For example here is an extract of this tutorial: OpenGL View matrix
In real life you're used to moving the camera to…
danijar
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93
votes
3 answers
How can I clean up excessive player-created rubble?
In my latest game I'm making, you can slice a 2D object arbitrarily, demonstrated in this gif:
You can continuously cut it into hundreds or thousands of pieces. This doesn't create a lot of lag, because they're always in a sleeping physics state,…
Garflington
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93
votes
2 answers
How do modern game engines achieve real-time rendering vs Blender's "slow" rendering?
I'm new to both gamedev and Blender, and there's something I can't shake:
In Blender, a single render (even using the more advanced Cycles renderer) can take up to 45 seconds on my machine. But obviously, in a game, you can have amazing graphics,…
smeeb
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91
votes
16 answers
Good game design books?
I have some experience in creating, however I like to have some well written reference material to help me produce better products. Are there any game design books that are not aimed at a particular programming language?
esde84
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90
votes
7 answers
Free ebooks about game development
Are there good free ebooks on game development? I don't care if they are theoretical or technology specific, I want to start reading one free book that worth it.
mati
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89
votes
8 answers
Why do loot drops contain (mostly) useless items?
I was thinking about this and couldn't figure this out. In Diablo you kill enemies and they drop random things. But usually the drops are worthless to you relative to what you already have equipped. Why bother building a drop system that gives…
Daniel Kaplan
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88
votes
8 answers
How many threads should I have, and for what?
Should I have separate threads for rendering and logic, or even more?
I'm aware of the immense performance drop caused by data synchronization (let alone any mutex locks).
I've been thinking of taking this to the extreme and doing threads for…
j riv
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88
votes
13 answers
Why do most 2D platformers start off in the left and progress in the right direction?
In almost all 2D platformers I've played, your avatar always starts off on the left side of the world, and continues on to the right. Is there something designers gain by doing this?
jcora
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88
votes
15 answers
What are some good learning resources for OpenGL?
I have been using the OpenGL ES on the iPhone for a while now and basically I feel pretty lost outside to the small set of commands I've seen in examples and adopted as my own. I would love to use OpenGL on other platforms and have a good…
DFectuoso
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87
votes
9 answers
Why don't C++ Game Developers use the boost library?
So if you spend any time viewing / answering questions over on Stack Overflow under the C++ tag, you will quickly notice that just about everybody uses the boost library; some would even say that if you aren't using it, you're not writing "real' C++…
James
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87
votes
5 answers
What is an optimum failure rate that will keep people coming back to my game?
I'm guessing some research has been done into this but I can't find much information. The question might be a bit too vague in itself as it depends on so many other factors.
I'm developing a puzzle game that I want to be challenging, but not so…
Will Calderwood
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87
votes
8 answers
Why don't more games use vector art?
It would seem to me that vector art is more efficient in terms of resources/scalability; however, in most cases I have seen artists using bitmap/rasterized art. Is this a limitation put on the artists by the game programmers/designers? As a…
Parris
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87
votes
10 answers
What can I do to make sure that I have the energy to work on my game while working full-time?
I work as a software engineer 40+ hours a week and I find that between balancing my personal life and family responsibilities that I have literally no energy to work on game development.
What can I do to make more time for my hobby without burning…
radenon
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