Demo game competition - My video tutorial series

Hi everyone

As usual it seems the new year is inspiring lots of people to be creative and get things done that they've been putting off.

It also seems great minds think alike!
I was just about to upload the video tutorials I’ve been recording then I spotted redspark has started to share his tutorial series too…. you lucky people,
you wait so long for some video tutorials, then two series come along at once

I started to record mine back in November, after the announcement of the VS demo game competition so the broad aim of my tutorials is to follow the whole process of creating my demo game submission from scratch, so you can see a full game being created over time.

This probably means that my tutorials are not as well organised and concise as redspark’s, but instead form more of a “train of consciousness” as I go through each aspect of creating my demo game. They’re probably better suited to someone who wants to sit and watch a whole process rather than nip in and out for quick reference.

I've tried to keep them to specific topics and include as many useful tips and tricks along the way, this does mean they are pretty long and often represent the actual time it takes to complete each stage. I've included chapters to help navigate around them.

With limited time to finish my game submission before the end of January I've shifted focus onto getting that done, but thought I’d release the tutorials I've already edited and completed now to help with everyone’s new-found, new-year creativity!

Hopefully they will be useful to the community and will work alongside the great tutorial series already being uploaded by redspark.
I suppose you can't have too many tutorials… the more the merrier

I’ll be adding more as my game develops, but my focus for January will be on completing the game before the competition deadline.(unless it gets extended again )

Hope you enjoy the first tutorials!
You can find the playlist on my you-tube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfsiC3OLVf-5sx9vCG70n...

Your comments and feedback are most welcome.

Cheers Andi, I'll link them in the video section of the tutorial index page on the wiki. Just let me know when you add anymore & I'll update the page with the new links.

It's a bit late now mind, so I will check out your videos the morrow afternoon.

* edit: ok managed to get to tutorial 2 so far. I'm a little confused as to why you are adding the "letterbox" border thing as a scene object. Doesn't it make more sense to add it as an interface? If you were for example to create a menu interface that faded/slided into the top bar & an inventory interface that faded/slid into the bottom bar then you would only need one bar image for each interface which can then be positioned via the absolute positioning option.

Quick note: if added as an interface it would only need to be width of game default resolution because the interface is fixed to the viewport.

Quick note 2: I understand why you have exported your scene assets at the intended scene resolution, but in terms of optimization, it's not good for people playing the game on mobile/hand-held devices or low end machines, as those few additional kb in file-size add up, especially if you have loads of scene objects or animations on the screen at the same time. I tend to use a temporary background with all the objects included in the image which I use for placing/aligning the scene objects & then when I've done that I tend to replace the background with the final stripped down version. However for characters & animations that it's good practice to have the canvas size for each animation or character consistent as it is a pain in the arse having to manually line up animation frames for each animation 1 frame at a time.

And... another quick note: I recommend using .png or .webp for images only. I've had issues in the past with .jpg files displaying correctly, plus ,jpg is a lossy format. Also for audio you should be using .ogg (vorbis) or .opus & for video you should be using .mkv (matroska) with ogg/opus video codec & vp8 for the video codec.

Other than that, your project & videos seem to be well organized.

P.S: In the next public build you will be able to determine which interfaces should be hidden/remain visible during cut-scenes, although I tend to use the hide/show cursor action parts instead of the begin/end cutscene actions as they prevent the player from skipping the cut-scenes, but they also (currently) don't automatically hide the interfaces.

P.P.S: Nice one for mentioning the tip about the mouse coordinates in regards to setting the animation center. I was going to mention it but it seems you already thought of it. The animation studio tool is ok, but if you use same animations that are already correctly positioned then you can use the coordinates to quickly set the animation center. Another method is to to create an initial frame (aka frame_0) which includes a little symbol/marker on it which represents where the animation center should be set & then you delete the frame when done. But each to their own methodology, madness & quirks!

Nice work! Very nice looking videos and content. The more the merrier is right. Your videos are going to be great for watching a project develop "live." Mine are more for learning a single task. Yours are better to see how to put it all together.

Nice table of contents. Just noticed that they were linked. Very nice.

PS: I got inspired by the request for demos too. That's why I started doing the tutorials as well.

Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated.

I'll try and get some of your tips into the next ones.

Fingers crossed I get the spare time to get the demo game done before the deadline.

Oh dear, oh dear... oh dear, oh dear! Ai sus!

Tutorial 4 @ approx 3.15: "& then you can kind of fiddle yourself" - I laughed quite a bit when I heard this, actually still chuckling at it, right now.

What thee like mate? what thee like?

P.S: is the verb coin interface based on the template I created? If it is & if I added a set visibility action part & then a pause it is because you are supposed to set the same delay value in the set visibility action part as the pause so that the interface fades out, rather than instantly hiding. If you want it to instantly hide/show then don't bother with the set visibility part.

P.P.S: getting the offset values for positioning cursor at center of interface is as simple as: x = (width / 2) & y = (height / 2).

I only noticed I'd said "fiddle yourself" when I was editing it.. thought I'd leave that in for a little treat

You mean, for people that pay attention to details, like me? Ai sus!

Just got to the way system part of the tutorial. Although you can setup the scaling points inside of the way points (paths) inside of the border it is recommended that you create them outside of the border. Middle click & drag viewport to right then create new paths on the left of the image. Hold shift key down when creating points (shift snaps the lines to a sort of grid/angle & helps keep them straight). Scaling is only recommended for y instead of x (well if you want it to scale smoothly that is). What I tend to do is create at least 4 points. The bottom 2 will be the the maximum scale value for the scene (closest point to camera) & the top 2 will be the minimum scale (furthest point away from the camera). The first point should be placed below the lowest point of the way border & the last point should be placed above the highest point of the way border, which will prevent the character from scaling lower or more than the minimum or maximum intended scale values. I don't scale my characters above 100% because it causes artifacts & whatnot because the graphics aren't vector images - personal pref. on my part in regards to scale.

* edit: for way borders there is a shortcut key you can press/hold to create a new border point inside of an existing border. It's either ctrl or alt or something along those lines... I always forget what the shortcut key is. Terrible, terrible short term memory for stuff like that.

More nice tips there. Is there a shortcut keys section in the wiki?

Not sure where I learnt my cutout method, must have been an existing tutorial. :-)

Maybe on the old wiki... but I don't remember seeing one, sorry. We could do with compiling one though.

Hi guys,
I know I said I wouldn't be putting more tutorials up in January, as I need to focus on finishing my submission, but I've had such nice feedback from folk on you-tube that I decided to quickly edit together another one I'd already recorded.

Its available on my VS tutorials playlist.. enjoy!:
VS Tutorial 5 - Objects, visible conditions, changing rooms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug11uFbRsc8&list=PLfsiC3OLVf...

Nice one mate. Just added it to your section of the tutorial page of the wiki.

http://wiki.visionaire-tracker.net/wiki/Tutorials#Andiliddel...

Will watch it later on, or the morrow.

P.S: there are now 19 tutorial videos available, at this moment.