203
votes
Accepted
What are the advantages of putting cheat codes into a game?
One major feature is that they make debugging easier.
If there's a broken puzzle door that's not unlocking, and you can bypass it by clipping through the walls, or skip past some tough combat with ...
- 132k
147
votes
Accepted
What is actually moving in an endless runner?
I slightly disagree with Philipp's answer; or at least with how he presented it. It gives the impression that moving the world around the player might be a better idea; when it's the exact opposite. ...
- 2,094
117
votes
Accepted
You've killed the enemy you needed to get across. Now you have to die and retry?
Just have them respawn
Have an enemy spawner which will either spawn enemies that fall to their own deaths or just respawn the enemy once you killed it (e.g. drop it out of a pipe like in the ...
- 2,012
91
votes
What are the advantages of putting cheat codes into a game?
Yes, you totally should have cheats in your game.
Replay value! Having all weapons with infinite ammo and invulnerability might make level 1 far too easy, but it can also be a lot of fun when you ...
- 118k
88
votes
What is actually moving in an endless runner?
Both options work.
But if you want the endless runner to be truly endless, you will have to keep the player stationary and move the world. Otherwise you will eventually hit the limits of the ...
- 118k
83
votes
Accepted
Having the player face themselves after the mid-game
Having the player play against their own earlier accomplishments actually seems like a viable approach to implement dynamic difficulty. The better the player, the more challenging the game will become....
- 118k
78
votes
Accepted
How can a game handle all characters at once?
Now how does the game handle those 30 Projectile and 70 units by
handling them on 100 different threads
No, never do that. Never create a new thread per resource, this doesn't scale in networking, ...
- 1,860
58
votes
How do videogames store information offscreen?
Usually you should separate the logical state of your game environment from the visual representation.
The player might only see a small part of it on their screen, but you still keep the state of ...
- 118k
58
votes
Can inflation exist in a fixed price Mmorpg world?
The problem with this system is that it just fights the symptom, not the cause.
Inflation means that money loses value, because players have too much of it. It's not the items which become more ...
- 118k
54
votes
How can I discourage camping while still supporting a "sniper" style of play?
Force players to visit an area not suitable to sniping, to continue playing, for example limited ammunition. Or advantages instead of disadvantages - buffs that only last a while that you cant get in ...
- 825
52
votes
How can I discourage camping while still supporting a "sniper" style of play?
Ensure that the positions are not defensible, but just hidden
One way to get snipers to be mobile is to mirror real life military tactics that generally prescribe snipers to immediately vacate their ...
- 1,019
47
votes
You've killed the enemy you needed to get across. Now you have to die and retry?
When you are designing a game, you are in control, don't forget that.
If you have enemies that can be killed which are crucial to traversing the level, why are they able to die in the first place? ...
- 471
43
votes
How can I discourage players from attacking everything they encounter?
The reason why players tend to kill anything that moves in most games is because those games reward them for doing so. Whenever the player kills an enemy, they gain something which makes up for the ...
- 118k
41
votes
How to make healing in an exploration game interesting
I think you need to consider this at a more fundamental level: what is the gameplay purpose of having a health system in your game?
A conventional health system serves two purposes: (1) it gives a ...
- 2,116
39
votes
How can a game handle all characters at once?
Rule number one of multithreading is: Don't use it unless you need to parallelize on multiple CPU cores for performance or responsiveness. A requirement "x and y should happen simultaneously from the ...
- 118k
39
votes
Why do games have consumables?
Well, in a roguelike or something, where eventually if you don't use your consumables they expire (because you die, or win), then consumables provide another layer of medium- to long-term strategic ...
- 401
37
votes
How do videogames store information offscreen?
You are going at it backwards.
You start with the logical state of your game and model that. The whole logical state of the entire world will almost certainly be too much to be held in memory at once,...
- 803
37
votes
Is there any term for reverse gamification?
Extra Credits made an episode about De-Gamification a while ago. But I am not sure if that's what you mean. They are talking about removing incentives and obstacles to allow the player to interact ...
- 118k
37
votes
What is actually moving in an endless runner?
Building off of XenoRo's answer, instead of the re-rooting method they describe, one could do the following:
Create a circular buffer of parts of your infinite map generated, which your character ...
- 1,713
37
votes
Are there ways to limit players other than a conventional currency system or a resource system?
Two resources many novice game designers tend to overlook are time and attention. The player can not do everything at once and can not be everywhere at once. So they need to prioritize which problems ...
- 118k
36
votes
Why do most racing games have tracks that are closed loops?
I'm not sure about your assertion of "most" - many games like GT, DriveClub, etc, have many point-to-point races...
But there are two reasons to this:
Firstly, many real-life races are lap-based on ...
- 371
35
votes
Accepted
Why don't beat 'em ups allow player character sprites to face toward or away from the screen?
When you have a side-scrolling beat-em-up game like Streets of Rage, then fighting enemies vertically instead of horizontally would have a number of drawbacks:
While it is easy for the player to see ...
- 118k
34
votes
Is it worth to implement game mechanics/rules separately from the main code?
Generally speaking, the ease with which any system can be extended is dependant upon the degree to which its subsystems are tightly or loosely coupled. Usually, the more loosely coupled the subsystems ...
- 11.5k
30
votes
How can I implement multiplayer cloaking with visuals that resists client-side hacking?
When you look at the countless other questions about preventing cheating in multiplayer games which are on this site you will easily see that there really is no technical measure to prevent client-...
- 118k
29
votes
Why do games have consumables?
Consumables can be a way for your player to pass difficulty spikes in your game.
Common game design wisdom is to create a gradually increasing difficulty curve. But when your game is complex and its ...
- 118k
28
votes
Accepted
What makes a good jump scare?
If you give some more details about your game then someone can help you write a specific jump scare. But it's far more valuable that you understand why a jump scare works.
The correct way to utilize ...
- 336
28
votes
How can I discourage camping while still supporting a "sniper" style of play?
"Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me!"
The "problem" of camping is vastly over-stated. That someone might get an easy kill by means of an ambush — which is what most sore losers ...
- 424
28
votes
Accepted
How to address players struggling with simple controls?
Are your test player having trouble discovering the controls or using them?
If they have trouble discovering them, you can add a prompt that explains them. To make it unobtrusive for players that don'...
- 25.2k
28
votes
How can I prevent cheating in my collecting and trading game?
I think I can offer a few solutions.
Set a minimum level to trade. This would essentially prevent players from making accounts just to collect the free stuff, as players will have to put in effort ...
- 472
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible