multiplang

@2x image variants and viewport scaling are completely different things.

 

In terms of scaling, It's quite trivial to retrieve device information for pixel density, screen size, etc. I'd imagine somewhere in the cocos2d-x framework there are checks for all of those specifics that drive the initial set up at run time.

 

(50,100) should always be (50,100) in your game logic. Anything else is a terrible way to work IMO. The "auto" scaling you're seeing should be nothing more than varying values in the GL viewport being created by cocos2d-x according to varying hardware.

 

I rolled my own game/rendering engine and had to set all of this rendering logic up, most middleware should just be ready to roll. I have unified coordinate logic between SD/HD devices and also coordinate conformity between iPhone and iPad - so multiple factors across three scales (iPhone SD, iPhone HD/iPad SD, iPad HD) bringing every (50,100) into the same relative screen location.

 

Would be very surprised if cocos was any different by design. Or if it couldn't at least be made to behave that way easily via some setup flags.

I don't really recommend the idea, because evil is something far too complicated to accommodate in multiple choice dialogue options. games today are only really capable of letting choose to be normal, or inexplicably psychotic.

if you try your hand at this though, what I would do is write a good story with good protagonist. don't worry initially about goodness, just write a really good story. then, with that done (at least a simple draft), rework the story in the way it would unfold if your protagonist was abhorantly selfish/greedy/power hungry. don't worry too much about the why . as has been said, people can fill in their own blanks.

what you need to establish first and foremost is an actual good present-tense (in other words - the current in-game events) story.

Yeah the Mario reference is strange agree - particular if you see the game I'm working on. It's the first that thing came to mind when I thought about having a stash of stuff that gets spent whether you win or lose.

So, as for crystals - they're everywhere. Nearly every enemy killed spawns a random number of them, and they're also placed around levels. You begin the game with a fairly weak weapon (infinite ammo), and the crystals will just be used to increase that weapon's power, and unlock new ones, including some that are not upgradable but have finite ammo instead.

It's a space-shooter. I have a WIP gameplay vid if interested (this recording is pretty old now):


I think I'd rather go for the reset model, although I can't tell whether that'll make it too easy to stockpile.

If I went for a persistent ammo spend I guess I'd put ammo everywhere, make it cheap to buy, and easy to loot.

The trouble with using reviews as educational critiques is that you don't necessarily know the personal tastes of the writer. As a gamer the best way to use the information is always to find a reviewer with similar tastes to your own, because what they say will likely hold weight for you personally.

Imagine I say:
"I absolutely LOVE racing games but I've never really understood or been into first person shooters. By the way, don't get the new Halo game because I hated it".

Obviously the second sentence is invalidated by the first one, in terms of useful objective information, and I would hope that example is more extreme than anything in typical videogame journalism, but I do think unseen biases (that quite likely don't match your own biases) are skewing the words you read a certain way.

We all have biases. And I think in fact game reviews would probably be boring if they weren't able to reflect the writers themselves as individuals. So I don't think it's a bad thing by any means, but if you want to be usefully informed you just have to know to some degree the writer of whatever you're reading.

In terms of what I'd like to see done, I have had a slightly related idea for a while that I think would be cool.

Basically, a site that aggregates videogame reviews and lets you rate the reviews you read. These ratings of reviews wouldn't have to be public - just on your personal account, as a tool to allow you to see reviewers that consistently match your individual tastes rise to the top of the mix (this would be different for every user). So each user for this site would see lists ordered from top to bottom based on their own input over time.

The evolution from there would be to have last.fm style "neighborhoods", whereby you're linked with people that share similar tastes to your own, opening up game discoverability by association and recommendation.

I guess in terms of tying this back to learning for game developers - maybe that would be a matter of letting users opt-in to data sharing for the larger gaming community to analyze associations and "clouds" of gaming tastes, and individual developers would also be able to see which reviews of their games had the greatest number of "agreeing" customers in order to know that those critiques are the most significant.

I don't know what the industry norms are here (I would say there probably aren't any), because every studio has its own internal structure, and the lines often blur when it comes to the who and how of game design processes.

When you say you want to be a game designer, what exactly do you want to do - day to day - in your professional role? If the answer is that you see yourself providing top-level creative direction to a dedicated technical team, then there's likely a very long road ahead. Forget any kind of magic bullet approach. You have to do the nitty gritty, and essentially build demonstrably EXCELLENT games.

So build some games. While you're at it you'll get to find out whether you're actually good at game design.

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by having the right potential?