#devhelp

The Yume Nikki Fangame Inspiration Folder 2 is here! 

(+ the 2015 original version!)

Apparently the original Yume Nikki Screenshot folder was more useful than I thought.  So, I ended up making another one & reuploading the first one for some help to all those out there looking to make a fangame (or just like looking at other people’s pixel art).

What this is is just a giant folder with a bunch of little folders filled with screenshots of various fangames, sorted by world type.  Most of these aren’t the entire fangame as that’s a bit hard to capture, but instead a taste of a few different worlds.  There’s also some gifs from @yumegifi in addition to stillshots of games!  The quality varies from fangame to fangame, but even the fangames that aren’t the best are good to know about so you don’t make the same mapping mistakes as they did.   Fangames in this pack include:

Last winter I wrote a post about motivation on my Russian dev blog. I decided to translate it now, since I think it was pretty good. Also, it's about time I make some devhelp content for this blog, rather than just reblogging from other people.

I have a lot of trouble with procrastination and unmotivation when it comes to gam mak, as someone with ADHD and a busy university schedule as well. These are things I personally do to try and fight it. 

✍️ Advice from a superhuman gamedev friend: try to identify the problem and act accordingly. Don't know what to do with Location X? Brainstorm it, sketch out some ideas, make concept art. No time/energy/motivation to make graphics right now? You can go write out dialogues or event something. Don't like Location Y, or maybe it seems redundant? Go ahead and delete it without mercy. :D

✍️ Make a list of everything you need to do. The more detailed, the better - at least for me. Subheadings help. You won't jump on top of a mountain in one push, but little steps will slowly bring you to the top c: Here’s a piece of my demo checklist. Crossing things out has never felt so good.

✍️ Another thing that is useful to do is to write out your progress. It may be hard to estimate, but useful to track how you're doing! I can't seem to do an overall estimate for my game, so I just wrote it out by level like this. (Also 2/5 is 40%, I know. I’m bad at maths, okay?)

✍️ Get inspired! Play some other games; watch, read or listen to something new. Some people prefer to take everything from their own head (which isn't even quite true), but I am more inclined to absorbing as much information as possible. I live off inspiration from all kinds of things. 

✍️ Share your work! Getting feedback from players is incredibly motivating. All those likes, comments, impressions, fanart even... It makes me really happy and makes me want to keep going, because it's not just for me anymore, someone actually enjoys it! (So for fans: don't be afraid to give feedback to authors, feed us~)  ✍️ Oversharing isn't good, however. It's a psychological thing - if you talk about your plans too much, your brain may feel like they have already been fulfilled and you don't need to do much else. So I am careful about what I share. That's why I don't post too much about my game's plot besides the demo.

✍️ Take a break! Seriously, just put it aside for a day. Don't think about your project, do anything you want. It might clear your mind and bring the inspiration back.

✍️ Watch a cute anime about Overcoming Hardships and Achieving Goals, or just listen to some music from it... Yes, this is the final point of my post because it really does help me. My favourites for this are Love Live! and Little Witch Academia. You might have something else that motivates you. (Please do share, or give recs for similar cute things as well :>)

A few.

One of the things that’s helped me is that when I look at other people’s stuff I remember that they’ve probably poured hours and hours of their time into obtaining that skill that I haven’t.  Like, I’ve put in a lot of time and effort into studying art, but maybe not as much as someone who’s in art school spending 8 hours a day on art instead of like my 1-2 hours out of art school.  I’ve studied other things from learning good customer service skills, build up emotional support groups, cooking, spending good times with my friends, etc..  It’s not bad that I’m not at their level yet, I’m learning other things too.  I hope you find things that you’ve been working on (even if it’s spread out like dealing with illness & your family & your doggo) that you can feel good about too ;w;

Another is thinking, “You know, they were probably like me.  If they can do it, I can.”  Look up tutorials.  Set your sites to be the dude.  Even if your improvement is minimal, it is something.  You’re not always the best judge of your improvement either.  You may not be the dude, but you can become a different dude.  Nobody came out of the womb knowing how to read, nor could you read the same level of books you did in 2nd grade as you did in 5th grade.  Same with most other skills.  Developing games is hard!  Even the simpler stuff can be a pain to wrap your brain around if you haven’t known anything about game development beforehand!  Don’t feel bad you ain’t there yet.  

Focus more on yourself: what kind of goals can I set for my game that AREN’T popularity goals?  Like what new thing can I make or try in this game?  Can I make a game that has 20 unique maps to explore?  Can I make a game with only 1 tileset & 1 characterset? Can I organize my game’s switches, variables, & common events in a more organized manner than the last time? Can I learn how to properly make pathfinding events on my own?  Setting goals for yourself and achieving them even with a lot of struggles helps a lot!!! It means you did something you weren’t sure of doing and now you know something new you didn’t before.  Don’t set something too out of range for yourself though: a 4 hour deep RPG with all custom hand painted graphics and multiple endings will not get done in a month, even if you are a professional!  It’s a lot of pain and hurting yourself too if you overwork or set too high goals for yourself, and you gotta treat yourself right - you don’t need to hurt yourself doing something you’re doing for fun OTL

Focusing more on yourself helps you develop skills, and developing more skills lets you be more interesting.  Fun fact: You’re probably already interesting, but you don’t think that because you’re stuck with yourself all day.  You know the ins and outs of you.  You see everything you are as boring since, well, you know, it’s you, and you’ve seen you 365 days every year.  That’s fine, just remember a lot of interesting people think they’re boring too!  Don’t let it bother you too much.  

One man’s boring is another’s exciting.  I live in Florida, a state full of palm trees.  When my friend came down here from New England (land of super cold and super no-palm trees just regular trees) he had a huge dose of culture shock because he’s never seen them in the wild before.  Your game and you probably have that same quality as well out there for someone!

Lastly, I’d talk to other people on ways to help you feel more self confident.  Feelings like this tend to extend out of game dev and into any creative field.  Your friends and family members have probably all felt this way at one point, and are likely to share their experiences with you if they’re cool beans.  Sharing things and coming up with a plan to get better or feel better about them is always a good idea when you can c,:

I asked some nice people on discord and they had some great advice:

Oddly enough, yes, this one and this one.  However, the pictures aren’t showing up thanks to Imageshack claiming another victim.  This guy’s got some good general tips on forest map design, he’s got the variation down pretty well.  I also dig this long talk on general level design in rpg maker, as well as this site that goes into depth on video game level design, but I’m not sure if that’ll help.

I got this list of audio editors, this collection of free music production programs, and this list of free and open software for music making, but I couldn’t tell you what’s best.

RPG Maker’s a good place to start since you don’t need to know how to do programming and there’s plenty of tutorials for it.  It’ll get you in the coding mindest in a sense, but you won’t have to worry about “Ok how do I make a character move” or anything like that.  If your game idea happens to be an RPG, an adventure game, a walking sim, or a visual novel, RPG Maker is a fine place to start.

There’s tons of engines out there you can check out if you don’t want to make one of those as well - this article gives a good breakdown on some good engines for beginners to use.  If you’re into visual novels, you can try learning how ren’py works (it’s free and not hard to pick up) or pick up tyranobuilder on steam (if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like programming period).  There’s also Twine if you like text adventures!