GameDevStash - Game design and development -

GameDevStash - Game design and development

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Blog

September 8, 2024

Big news and new plans

A lot of time has passed with no posts from me and I had my reasons for that. I am now finally ready to share the big news. In march I managed to finally land a job as a professional game developer. I am currently working as a programmer and a junior designer. Our game’s prologue is launching in a week on steam, with the full release following later this year. I am very excited to share this news. In my future posts I will share more information about the awesome studio I am happy to be a part of....
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Blog

October 5, 2023

Heresy RTS AI system implementation

Over the last few weeks I have been hard at work on an AI system that governs how AI actors behave and interact in the game. While the previous post focused on peaceful part of the game, today we will see some combat. Overview of the AI system What I want for my game is to have a map that feels alive. In a way I want the map to “play by itself”, even without the intervention of the player. To achieve this I created an NPC Player AI that governs the camps that may be scattered around the map....
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Blog

July 27, 2023

Heresy RTS job system and progress update

In the last entry of my blog I discussed basic design of the combat system for Heresy RTS. During the last two months I have been very busy with refactoring multiple systems to make them easier to extend. I have also designed and implemented a robust job system that allows for harvesting resources, building structures and collecting items. This blog entry will focus mainly on the job system. Job system basic information The job system relies on two main pillars. First is the Resource class which can be applied to to most game objects. The Resource class determines what an object...

May 10, 2023

Heresy RTS combat system basics

In the last entry of my blog I discussed the inspirations for the combat gameplay of my current project – Heresy RTS. This time I will go into details about the combat system that drives the game. Combat system basics To quickly reiterate my previous post, combat system in Heresy RTS draws inspiration from three different sources: Micromanaging distinct units (think of Warcraft 3). Dynamic and reactive combat (think of Total War real-time unit interactions). Managing equipment and resources (think of Company of Heroes/Men of War or basically any RPG game). Each unit in Heresy has an AI system which...

Blog

April 17, 2023

Heresy RTS combat system inspirations

In a recent article I revealed my new project, an RTS/RPG hybrid. Strategy games, and RTS-es in particular, rank among my favourite game genres. I started my adventures with strategies in the early nineties with games like Centurion, Fantasy General, Command & Conquer and Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. I also played tabletop war games and boardgames. My love for strategies persisted even through the relative “dry-spell” of the 2010s. Many of the games I played over the years boasted really cool features which I wanted to see elaborated upon or translated into different contexts. This is the first of a...

Blog

March 16, 2023

Unveiling Heresy – my new RTS/RPG hybrid project

After a long period of gamedev hiatus I am ready to announce my new project tentatively called Heresy. It is an RTS/RPG hybrid. I actually started laying the foundations at the end of November 2022. Many of the systems, like combat, movement, building and unit production are designed and prototyped. In this article I would like to share some introductory information about the game as well as the combat system. Basic information If I had to do an elevator pitch for the project, it would go like this: “A tactical RTS/RPG hybrid with fluid and dynamic combat that resembles Total...

Blog

January 31, 2023

Status update – a year long break

Year 2022 has been a breakthrough year for me. To make things short I finally got a programming job. Early in 2022 I started a 5 month long internship as a Java Full Stack developer. Immediately afterwards I landed a job as a Junior Java Fullstack developer in a large international company. The sheer amount of knowledge I needed to gain obviously halted my game development activities. I focused strictly on Java, Angular, Spring, HTML and CSS. The knowledge I gained really broadened my horizons. Now, once I am settled a bit in my new professional role, I am going...

Blog / Tutorial

November 15, 2021

Create GitHub repo for existing Unity project

Whenever I get my hands on new Unity assets, do quick tutorials or want to test some code I create a new project and go wild. Most of the time, these projects are abandoned and deleted when I’m done with them. However, once in a while I will write some valuable code or design cool mechanics that I want to save for future reference. In such a case I create a GitHub repo. The process of adding a pre-existing project to GitHub is slightly different from a typical scenario in which you first create a GitHub repo for a project...

Learning / Unity

March 28, 2021

My Top 10 sources for gamedev assets

As a solo indie game developer I do not have the luxury of choosing all the assets that I need or want. Even though I am able to create basic 3D and 2D art, this is not really practical in most cases. If I want to quickly prototype an idea or game mechanics I cannot spend hours or days on making specific gamedev assets. This is why I absolutely love using various game dev asset stores and sites. Even when I am not working on anything I still visit those sites from time to time to see what’s available. Below...

Learning / Unity

March 28, 2021

Top gamedev resources that influenced my learning

Over the years I have gone through tons of articles, tutorials and courses. I would grab a course whenever I was stuck on a project. I would read articles while commuting. Being in constant contact with specific field of expertise is critical to growth. However there have been a few gamedev resources that have given me a strong push, a new perspective and opened new paths that I wasn’t aware of. General knowledge gamedev resources This list contains gamedev resources related to general coding practices and Unity specific knowledge. Complete C# Unity Game Developer – this was the first course...

Blog / My designs

March 21, 2021

Heresy Platformer winter progress update

The winter has passed, sadly without any updates on my part since late November. This does not mean, however, that I stopped working on Heresy. Far from it, I managed to implement many features into the game. I will present the overview of additions in this winter progress update. Combat system progress update The combat system is the aspect that is easiest to demonstrate. At the same time it may be the most important aspect of the game for some people. Here are the basic features of the system that I already implemented: Different types of attack. Player may unlock...

Title image for the Heresy platformer video reveal

Blog

November 28, 2020

Heresy platformer gameplay reveal

Regular work may be a rare commodity for many people during these strange times. This is why I consider myself particularly lucky having double the business currently. This has a negative impact on my game design activity though. I was however able to squeeze in some hours here and there for the past 2 months. This way Heresy platformer announced in September project moved at a very slow, albeit steady pace. However today I am ready to post a short Heresy platformer gameplay reveal. In this time I was able to create: a physical character controller that takes uniform input...

Blog

September 22, 2020

Summer break, plans for the future and “Heresy platformer”

The Covid-19 lockdown was a very special experience for everyone involved, especially for parents with school aged children. Juggling work, parenting and part time work of a teacher was quite challenging. During this time I took a break from Unity to focus on my programming skills. I took some courses on coding that focused on issues from basic to advanced. I wanted to revise what my knowledge to be in good shape when the children, hopefully, go back to school. The time has finally come and I keep my fingers crossed. I can now announce the start of my new...