This project isn’t finished, but I want to know what you think about the idea of a knight from the classic medieval era who has to save someone, but that someone is his rabbit friend who was kidnapped by a malicious and tyrannical king who wants to have everyone in the kingdom. Your goal is to go through all the kingdoms ruled by the king and free them from his tyranny and rescue his friend.
I have a lot of questions about video game design. For example, if I download or buy sprites, should I put the author in the credits of my game? Or if I modify a sprite, will it technically be mine or would it still belong to the creator of that sprite?
I hope I can get this project going because I’m having a bad streak. I do a project and it never comes out, and it gets stuck in one place and doesn’t advance, and when I try, the entire project fails. If you want to help me with any proposal or idea, I will accept it. I’ll leave you a screenshot of the level selector, it’s similar to those in Cuphead.
It sounds like a cute idea. I have 3 rabbit friends myself. I have had them since they were kits, and if anything frightens them, they always come running for me. So I know the importance of keeping rabbit friends safe from tyrannical enemies, unexpected loud sounds and spooky looking shadows.
For sprites, or sounds, music, really anything you put in your game that you did not make yourself, you must check their license. Sometimes you are legally required to credit the artist. Sometimes you are not. Sometimes you can modify the work and claim it as your own. Sometimes you can not. If attribution is not required then you do not have to give it. But I think it is a nice gesture to do so anyway.
If you want to modify sprites to claim as your own, you should only work with licenses like CC0 assets for your game. These are public domain and you can do what you like. There are plenty of CC0 everything out there so that you would never need to modify sprites made by an artist that did not want anyone to modify and pass off as their own.
I hope this project breaks your bad streak. Every project, even small ones, have sooo much that needs to be done in them, that my tip for getting stuck on something is to either scrap that feature entirely and implement an acceptable replacement (or just forget that feature entirely until a future project when you know more), or to just work on another area of the project completely and come back to that part later when your native intelligence has come up with the solution in the background while you were busy taking care of other things in the project and sleeping.
Also it helps to remember that game dev is often lonely, boring, frustrating, irritating and sometimes downright impossible. If you were an athlete I’d say walk it off, but since you’re a game dev I guess I’d say park it in that chair and keep going.
Yes, it is good practice to do this and also what the asset name is. Example,
“Asset Name” - by “Creator name, “Link to asset”
Just cause you buy an asset doesn’t mean it’s possible to use it in your type of project. You have to know what kind of license the creator of the sprite is allowing for it. Is it able to be used for commercial, personal use only, education purposes, etc. knowing this is important before using the purchased asset. Also creators should state what is okay for their asset in the store front. I would google the different types of license to learn more about them.
I can’t honestly count how many projects I have unfinished just stuck as a prototype forever on my hard drive. It’s a game developer curse that a lot of us deal with. You start a project full of hope, excitement and a great idea. Just to eventually get tired of working on it or burning yourself out and wanting to do something else just for a little bit. But the problem is returning to that project that has been shelved. A ton of developers have a huge list of prototypes but very rarely finish a project. So I think your feelings are valid and a common one at that.
I would recommend taking some breaks here and there from your project to keep it from these problems. Also if you have other good ideas, maybe you just want to create a cool mechanic from a game you just played. Go make that mechanic, and get it out of your system and then return to your project.
Keeping a dev log online where others read about your game and its progress can be a motivator for some because now you have others expecting more updates about your game and that inherently gives a feeling of needing to work on it to not disappoint the reader. It gives a different feeling of working on your project since others are now investing time into your creation.
Going outside and clear your mind a bit. Take yourself from your project to give your brain a break. Sometimes we need to take ourselves out from the project to think more clearly about it when returning to it.
And last thing I can note is create a game design document. It’s very important for making a game because you can note all your ideas down, read how the game is supposed to look like, play like, and all the details of the project. If you still like the game idea after writing stuff up for it for a day or two, then start working on a prototype with just the main mechanics and now you can “feel” if it is fun as you envisioned or not. Also keep the prototype very simple, and basic so it doesn’t waste too much time if you got to scrap it anyway later.
There’s probably a ton more ideas to stay motivated and help you progress but these are just a few that has helped me. I hope this helps you out a bit!
Edit: Also this is a great place for game design advice as well. You could always post questions you have on here and myself and others will most likely give feedback or advice or just discuss the topic with you!
Hello, update on the Hollow Blade project. Here’s a small prototype of the level selector. It’s something similar to the Cuphead map, but with some changes. The maps will be made up of three zones, each with 5 levels. I’ve attached a screenshot.
