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Twitter for Game Developers

2/26/2014

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   I have been using twitter for the past few years now and something that I realized is that it is a great way to keep up to date on everything game related. I have seen many fellow developers scoff at twitter. Most of the time people tell me it is a big waste of time. The thing is, yes it can be. But most of the people that struggle to make the best of twitter are doing it all wrong!
   One of the issue I encountered when I first joined twitter was that there is no real explanation of what to do, or how to begin building your network. It doesn't even explain how hashtags work or why they're important.

   I spent the first few months just talking to myself. My tweets weren't reaching anyone and I didn't know why.

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   What I plan on doing is talking you through the basic steps of use. I am not going to tell you how to get a ton of followers, but I do intend on sharing some tips and explaining to you how hashtags work. If you're new to Twitter these tips will help you learn how to start finding and connecting to people.

For Game Developers?

   When it comes to social networking you would be surprised to know that twitter has a very large community of game developers. There are indie devs (such as myself), industry vets, concept artist, animators, designers and everything in between.

  
In the last hour I counted 59 tweets using the hashtag of #GameDev and that was only in English! What I like about twitter is it's format. It trims what is unnecessary from social networking. It is all about getting an idea out and sharing it instantly with a community.

Local Broadcast vs Tagged Tweet

   There are two kinds of tweets you can make. There is what is known as Local Broadcast and then there is a Tagged Tweet.
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Local Broadcast tweets are only seen by your followers.
A Tagged Tweet is a tweet that has a hashtag attached to it. This means that when someone searches for that hashtag (keyword) the tweet will appear in searches and can be seen by people who are not directly following you.

   A tagged tweet is the best way to reach a wide audience and be discovered. It is also a good way to find other people that share similar interest wit you. In this case it would be other Game Industry individuals.
   Local broadcast is when you tweet a message that has not been tagged. This means the tweet is only visible to your immediate followers and is not likely to be seen in the search results of Twitter.
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Adding a hastag allows your tweet to be seen in searches.
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   To summarize this, imagine that local broadcast is like telling a room of people a message whereas tagging a tweet is like being on a soapbox on the side of a busy street. It is hard to reach people and build a network when you're tweeting to an empty room.

   If you're attempting to network and share your work, you're going to want to tag your tweets so other people can find you. If you are solely using LB, you will find it hard to attract and find connections because no one can hear you.

How to use Hashtags

   Hastags are essentially keywords. Adding a hashtag to your tweet will make it appear in searches. People can click on a hashtag and they will be taken to the results of a search where they will see other tweets that have the same tag. Hashtags allow your tweet to be seen by everyone all over twitter.

   A hashtag can be added by pressing shift + 3 on your keyboard. This will add the number sign to your word and if done correctly the  word will turn blue and become a link. For a word to be properly tagged it needs to be one word. For example, tagging #Game Art is incorrect because only the word Game would be tagged. You would need to write it as #GameArt for it to properly appear in searches.

For Example:

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   I composed a tweet that simply said "Check out my Oscars". I then added the tag of #Aquarium and attached the URL of my video.
PictureThe search results.
   Now that my tweet is live I can click on the hashtag or type into the search bar the tag (#Aquarium) and it will take me to the search results with every tweet that has the same tag.

Pro Tip:
Click on a game related tag to find people in the game industry.

   We might not want to see every tweet there is. By default the twitter search is set to "Everything".

   If we wanted to just find my video or even other videos we can specify out search by selecting the "Videos" option in the sidebar to the left.
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Tip: Use this feature to find People,photos, videos and etc.
   We now see the same search results list, but now it has been narrowed down to only include tweets that have the tag #Aquarium and a video.
   If we were to apply this to a game related tag, such as #ConceptArt or #GameDev we would come across relevant tweets, photos and videos. This helps us find users and groups and users that we would want to follow and connect with.
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Retweeting

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Shout out to the guys at Word of Level Design.
 Retweeting is the act of forwarding a tweet. So think of it this way, someone tweets something such as "Great article on new modeling techniques" and they have 100 followers. Now if you go to their tweet and select the Retweet function you will now tweet that tweet to your followers, and if you have 100 followers that means it has reached 200 people.

   Retweeting is a great way to help a tweet build momentum, It helps the original tweet get more exposure. It is always a good idea to RT (Retweet) something that you want your followers to see, such as a great article,tutorial, video or portfolio.


Who to follow?

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   When you're new to twitter and you you're just starting to build you're network you might not know where to start. There are plenty of people, studios and developers to follow. Where do you start? I made a simple list of people to follow to help build your network and provide you with the industry info you will need.

Daily Hashtag Specials

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   On certain days of the week there are special hashtags that you can use to connect and network with other game industry people. Here are two of the best ones that I have used to network with.
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An example of what a Follow Friday tweet would look like.
Screenshot Saturday - Every Saturday it has become a tradition of sorts to tweet a screenshot of something you are working on with the hashtag #Screenshotsaturday. It can be a new level you're designing, an environment, Zbrush model or even a short video.
Follow Friday -  Follow Friday takes place every Friday. This involves the act of tweeting out #FF followed by the twitter name of the person or persons you would like others to see and follow.
Pro Tip: Use Follow Friday to discover new people and to promote and recommend other developers in our community.
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A typical Screenshot Saturday tweet.
Tip: Do not tweet images of your work if you're under an NDA. Tweeting an image of a game that is in development may be a violation of company policy and may result in your termination. Only tweet images of your personal work.

Useful #Hashtags for Game Developers

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Use these hastags when you tweet.
  When you're tweeting about your work, there might just be a hashtag for it. Do you want to discover some art? Do you want to find some interesting people to follow? Well check out some of the tags listed above. These tags are all used by people in the game and animation industry.

   The hashtags you use are not just limited to these. You can get more specific when you search and tweet. You can search for something such as #EnvironmentArt and #Maya and that will narrow down the search and help you find people and images relating to environment art in Maya.
Tip: Don't just Retweet and read, share! Be a part of the community!

   Twitter is a great way for a game developer to network. Everyday, every hour there are people talking about games, learning and sharing new technique or being inspired. The game industry has a very big presence on twitter and for an artist, student or veteran it is a great way to stay informed and grow.
​
- Danny Q
@Dannylv100
​
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The Indie Auction and The Road to KickStarter

2/17/2014

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   I can finally talk to you about what is next from me and my team. For the past year my team and I have been working on our next big game.
  
   We are preparing to launch our KickStarter early this summer. At the moment we are on track, but we are lacking a few things that will make our launch go a whole lot smoother.

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Click here to visit the Auction!
   To help with the launch of our KickStarter campaign we have decided to have an eBay Auction to raise some money to cover the costs of our launch. I will be auctioning items such as textbooks on Game Design, collectibles and etc. All money raised by this auction will go 100% to help our launch and ultimately our next game.

   You might be wondering, what kind of costs are you talking about? Well for starters we need to pay for the rental of camera equipment, studio time for voice overs plus the the audio engineer. All this and more is why we're having this auction.  
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A sneak peek at our next game.
   The auction goes live on February 21st 2014 and will run until the middle of March or until everything is sold. Thanks for all your support.

Update: The auction is now live and can be viewed by clicking here.

Update 2: The auction is now over! Thank you for spreading the word!

- Danny Q
@Dannylv100
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Level Design 101: Physics vs Scripted

2/12/2014

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  Welcome to another edition of Level Design 101. This time I am going to tell you a story from my previous experience helping out a friend with a project they were working on.

Note: A few details were changed in order to protect the identities of the people involved.

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   A few years back a friend called me over to help them with this level they had been working on. The level was pretty straightforward, you run and gun yourself through a few corridors of a mansion. Eventually you come to the end of the level and you can see the ext. You're at the top of the stairs and at the center of the room is a lone NPC. It is all pretty standard but this NPC is completely unaffected by any of your shots.
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   This is how it was set up. The player has the high ground and they can see the enemy on the ground below them. Above the enemy is a large chandelier. According to what my friend was going for, they wanted the player to come in and shoot the chandelier so that it would fall down and kill the enemy so the player can exit the level.

   The room was relatively empty. Just the staircase for the player to walk down from, the chandelier and the locked exit door for the player to escape from once the enemy is taken care of.



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The enemy is completely unaffected by any attacks.
   The enemy will stand in the center of the room and fire at the player. If the player tries to shoot the enemy they will quickly find out that the enemy is immune to any damage. The player however is still susceptible to all damage.
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   My friend wanted the player to figure out that the chandelier was the key to defeating this enemy. When the player enters the room they have a clear shot at the chains that held up the chandelier. This however is not in any way clearly stated or alluded to.

   Once the chains are shoot by the player the chandelier will fall from the ceiling and crush the enemy. This is the only way for the player to move forward to the end of the level.

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   When my friend showed me this chandelier sequence, it went off without a hitch. He ran straight into the room and fired right away at the chains. The chandelier fell, the enemy was defeated and the level was completed.

   It was now my turn to
give the level a try. I played through the first few rooms with no issues. I finally got to the last room and I fired straight at the chandelier....and it just swung around the ceiling. I fired at it over and over again and it just kept swinging in place. It finally just shot off the ceiling and flew into a corner of the room.
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   So here is the issue. The chandelier is set to work as a "Physics Asset". The way the chandelier moves and falls is completely left to chance. I tried the sequence again and again. More often than not the chandelier would either just swing in place and if it did break free from the chain it would be thrown to some other side of the room. This meant that the enemy in the center of the room would become unbeatable and therefore the level would impossible to complete.

    Time to run the numbers. If I shot at the chandelier ten times, and it
fell on target twice that would mean there would be an 80% chance of it going wrong.

  So think of it like this, if you were to knock an apple off of a tree using a rock, would you be able to make it land exactly where you wanted every time? There are so many things you would have to factor in when you through that rock, not to mention that once you hit that apple you would have no control over how fast or where it would fall. You can not predict the course it would take.
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Making the chandelier rely on physics will make it's path unpredictable.
   What I suggested to my friend was for them to instead change the chandelier into a scripted event. This would mean giving the chandelier a few simple parameters that would ensure it behaved how we wanted it to. I suggested we give the chandelier a code that said "When I take damage play the falling animation". When the falling animation took affect it would follow a predetermined path that would land on the enemy crushing him every time.
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   My friend was very adamant about having the chain be physics based because "It was cool". So they turned to me and said "Nope". They decided that having that random element was a lot more interesting than a scripted event. I know a lot of people hate scripted events (I do too) but in this scenario it made the most sense.

   When you have a condition such as "Enemy can only be defeated by the falling chandelier" and "Chandelier will work properly some of the time". You really see a fundamental problem forming, and you don't even have to be a game designer to see that.

   You never want to purposely design a "No Win Scenario". The worst part about this chandelier fiasco is that it always has the chance of going wrong. These kinds of scenarios are cheap and frustrating. No one ever wants to play a game where you fail due to things that are out of your control. As designers we should try and take as much control over the game as we can so that we may create enjoyable obstacles for players to engage in.
"Nope." - Unknown Game Designer
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   I heard from a few other people that my friend went ahead and showed off their level. As I predicted the chandelier sequence broke during the run through. In fact, they had to start over three times before they gave up and ended the walk through.

   Physics in levels can add a great level of unpredictability, but when it interferes with design it is best to stick to something that will almost certainly work, especially if it has something to do with a puzzle. The short and long of it is, know when you should have something scripted and when something should be random.​
​
- Danny Q
@Dannylv100
​

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    Dannylv100

       I am an Indie Game and Level designer, Consultant and host of Divercast.

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