online chat game

I don’t even know how to start this project, there’s so much. I didn’t want to get paralyzed over the workload, so I just jumped into something visual that I can test and get down.

I followed a tutorial from KidsCanCode on making an isometric grid, and then another tutorial from GDQuest for pathing, BUT I noticed that the finished version from KidsCanCode has better movement; the sprite’s pathing is centered on the tiles, whereas GDQuest has its path roaming on any angle. So I went to check the code from KidsCanCode, and it’s much more concise than what GDQuest made.

I don’t know if it’ll cause problems in the future, but I decided to use the KidsCanCode pathing instead of the suggested GDQuest pathing. It does what I want it to, and it’s also more compact.

It makes me wonder if KidsCanCode has better solutions? I’ll probably stick to their tutorials whenever I can going forward.

I spent hours yesterday doing research into art - how am I going to go about it? Despite whatever it is I WANT to do, I need to find what I need to do. How do I reduce load times? How do I make sure it doesn’t lag?

I’m actually the most terrified of dealing with this kind of network-data wrong, and it messing up the entire game.

Through my research, I’ve concluded the following:

 - 3d, no matter how simple, still creates bad load times (in the context of a multiplayer avatar chat game).

 - vector scales well, but is a lot harder to use and doesn’t make sense anyway because it has to be converted to pngs for in-game use anyway.

 - sprite sheets are surprisingly heavy for the system. Using a rigging + bones system looks worse, but will be faster to create art and way lighter to run. It’s just more practical.

 - It’s possible to have users create their avatar, and then save the avatar into a sprite sheet to reduce load times. It’s more complicated to create, but then every loaded avatar is just one set of sprites instead of multiple layers of overlapping sprites.

As much as I think 3d would be really cool, in order to reduce latency/lag, I will probably try to find a 2d workaround with rigs/bones. I’m not sure if I’m going to go with sprites or not yet. I might do something in 2.5D? We’ll see.

The pillars of this game... ideally:

F2P friendly: Do not content-lock - Overall, the game should be playable and enjoyable without paying. (successful examples: League of Legends, Overwatch, Dead by Daylight, Apex Legends, Hotel Hideaway)

Great art: Let’s just make things look good.

Male friendly: A lot of games are “too cute” or lean towards korean/japanese style characters. As a result, I feel like it attracts a one-sided audience. I want avatars to have balanced appeal, and to create an equal number of fashionable items for both genders.

 Freedom of Expression: This is probably the most contraversial part. There’s a lot of grey areas in this, but I’ve seen a lot of games dominate towards being too child-friendly, and censoring too much. Yes, it’s great if everyone gets along and is extremely PG, AND I also want it to be a community that’s not afraid to debate opinions or express themselves in different ways. I don’t like the idea of the community harboring one dominant school of thought. I don’t know, I’m sure things will adjust and grow as needed. I’ll need to figure out guidelines somehow.

but I’m going to write anyway. This is the start of my gamedev journey.

I want to make an online chat game. I’ve wanted to for a long time. Eversince the fall of GaiaOnline, it’s something I wanted to wish into existence.

Highrise exists, but I really don’t like the art style, and pushing pay-to-play content is reaching obnoxious levels. It’s suffering from the same thing that took down GaiaOnline. HabboHotel is successful, but the avatars are really unappealing imo. Hotel Hideaway is probably the best predecessor out there - they do almost everything right. The only thing is - I would want it in a different art style, and maybe with more things to do.

Enter me, an artist, with little-to-no game design experience.

I just want this thing to exist. 

I want to do what others could not.

And above all else, I want to prevent it from falling into the cycle of only creating pay-to-play content, and I feel like the only way to do that is to control it myself.

So I’m writing these blog posts as a way to kind of chronicle/journal my gamedev journey.

This is going to be near impossible.