Writing a book on Defold

Dev diaries
#102

Update on what’s happening:

I apologize about being slow. Have a bunch to do, and trying to responsibly juggle everything. Next chunk will be the physics chapter. I slightly got sidetracked with making additional physics examples… and have produced two complete, but still small games (actually three - a testament to the productivity enabled by Defold, but the third is not physics based). The basic ideas could be remixed to produce a number of original, compelling games. I’ll be uploading guides for making each of them, and at least one of them want to have hosted in the tutorial section here. Right now in my normal work we’re about a week away from finishing a big project and I will be focusing on that about until the end of this month, and then will get these next few things up! Lots more I want to do!

5 Likes
#103

Heya Pkeod, how’s the progress coming along if you don’t mind me asking.

#104

Still need to add PlayFab features to one of the game examples, and then will upload another chunk update. Regular work game is still being polished more… optimizing for mobile so it runs well on more devices.

#105

Now that the PlayFab SDK files for Defold were made available today, I’ve been testing the various features, and will be implementing the ones the game needs soon. Player ID creation, and syncing game data with the online service automatically, entering player IDs in multiple clients so that players can play their game on for example their PC and phone on the same game save file. A big and important reason to have a service like this built into your game is if you have any IAP, you need a way for player’s to recover their games if they lose their devices or they fail, keeping it safe online means more happier customers and other users.

It’s a really nice service good to pair with Defold for productivity, and it’s easy to use! There’s still room and reason for making your own game services, but if the scope of your project can work within something like PlayFab you absolutely should use it first. You can (pretty sure) export your player data to your own service later if you need to.

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#106

Interesting! Will there also be a physical copy?

#107

Once the full text is finished, I will ask a few of the normal publishers if they would like to print a physical form. No guarantees about physical copy.

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#108

This sounds nice, I’ll buy it for sure. About examples- one thing I often lack in tutorials and books about game development ( I’ve tried a lot of them during my years) is turnbased/boardgame examples. It would be nice to put one of them in since that’s a different type of game mechanic.

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#109

Any specific kind of game you are thinking of?

Remember Redhook’s Revenge in DOS? Something like that?

#110

Ah, good ol days… Not thinking of anything specific actually, anything that’s not an actiongame with an infinte game loop is interesting I think, wether it be old strategy games from Koei, Monopoly or good old Pirate games.

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#111

I was thinking about it yesterday, most of the game tutorials as said focus on Mario/Flappy Bird - like games. In my world every game should introduce and explain a new concept or game mechanic.
Like turnbased, multiplayer, calling external API’s, saving high scores, timers etc.
So instead of presenting three different kind of platformer/shooters it would be nice to throw in a boardgame, a point 'n click adventure, maybe a card game and other suitable tutorials.

My five cents.

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#112

I agree that full game samples are important. I dislike in game dev learning / starter kits that samples are not well polished, no real playable games that are fun.

I’m working on a bunch of different full (fully playable and trying to be fun with all menus but still minimal) game examples right now. Some of them fit what you want, there is a variety. I’ll post about here when they are ready.

Will for sure add some board game / turn based sim type games to my to do list. I’ve been thinking about doing hotseat base Go (no computer) and Chinese checkers. I bet it would be possible to use the PlayFab service to make turn based games without having to host any extra server stuff yourself. I’ll need to check it out later. There are cheap ways to do it (which are more exploitable) and more secure ways which are less easy for users to cheat, which is important if you want a game to be ran as a service that isn’t griefable/cheated.

Looked at some of the Koei games for SNES and there are some really neat mechanics which are hardly seen in modern popular games. http://snesguide.com/publishers/koei/ Only looked at let’s plays, but will play them later, and posting here as a reminder…

Card game and adventure game are on my todo list already. I’d like to do a dice board game like Redhook’s Revenge too… when I was a kid those kinds of games were one of the first I designed on paper and played with my friends. Basically Snakes and Ladders kind of thing but with more flavor and meta gameplay to make it interesting.

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#113

You certainly have thought about it a lot, I’m sure this will be a great book, it will take time to write about all the different aspects and technics of course but it will be great if you manage to stick to your plan. If you need some help with anything just let me know, I’m a Defold rookie in every way possible but would gladly help with testing and other stuff should you need it (when I’m not buried in Enterprise integration patterns of course… sigh).

KOEI was a favorite on my old amiga, spent my best years mastering “Bandit kings of ancient china”, those glorious days…

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#114

Just grabbed a pre order, looks like you are putting a ton of work into it, hope you can get it published.

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#115

Just purchased a copy of your book. Thank you for your work! Very satisfied right now. Keep it up :slight_smile:

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#116

Any Updates on the book?

#117

Been working on a few dozen full game examples. I’ll be refreshing the chapters in the near future to reflect Editor 2, but not yet. I’ll have more time early this month to publish more.

1 Like
#118

Does this book cover multiresolution games? Havent found anything about how to implement this? I guess its done by script?

/Isak

#119

I’ve not done it yet, but I have that in the current plan for examples.

I will cover the steps to create something like this https://github.com/britzl/publicexamples/tree/master/examples/fixed_aspect_ratio if you have not already studied it you should.

I’ll also cover considerations for different UI setups based on detected resolution, but that’s pretty basic.

#120

That sounds perfect, if i buy the book now can i start from the beginning now or will the first chapter still change so i need to go back in a few weeks and read it again?

The book sounds perfect for me=)

#121

Most of the theory will carry over, what you learn will still be useful, there will absolutely be a text refresh once Editor 2 is more prime time ready, but most of it should be similar just some more new things to learn due to additional features. As the editors and engines update, I plan to still do updates, and document updates so it’s easier to digest.