Comments on: DOs and DON’Ts for setting up your game

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Création site internet | Web Design | Programmation | Flyers [ Web Agence informatique... [...]Ludum Dare » Blog Archive » DOs and DON’Ts for setting up your game[...]...

By: Tourgen

Tourgen — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:58:32 +0000

I was going to use WASD + Q & E for turning. Maybe I’ll map the numpad too for international people.

By: agence de communication paris

agence de communication paris — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:56:17 +0000

agence de communication paris…

[...]Ludum Dare » Blog Archive » DOs and DON’Ts for setting up your game[...]…

By: mildmojo

mildmojo — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 07:13:03 +0000

Nice list. Definitely agree on the web builds making it much more likely that the game will get played. I’d never considered international keyboard layouts; thanks for the pointers.

Cross-platform is definitely an admirable goal, but I understand when I see single-platform entries. I tried to get a group of friends together to play the Artemis starship bridge simulator (not a LD game), and we couldn’t come up with three Windows PCs with 3D hardware between us! Not everyone has access to a build environment on every platform, and only one of the three is freely available & downloadable if you don’t already have it.

This is actually why I switched to HTML5/JS; many fewer headaches getting things to run cross-platform, much lower barrier to gameplay.

By: iforce2d

iforce2d — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:07:53 +0000

wow. I had wondered if there was anyone out there who played them all – a big thankyou!!

By: Osgeld

Osgeld — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:54:06 +0000

I dont like wsad only setups, I am a lefty and always use my right hand on the arrow keys for movement and left for mouse / action keys (ya know on the side where the most keys are)

usually when I do one of these things I do wsad AND arrow keys along with 90% of the time joypad … game controllers are trivial to implement and tween the 3 no one can really bitch about the control layout due to preference while saving you the time to put in a mapping option

By: krangGAMES

krangGAMES — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:29:26 +0000

Acutally, I notice now that that’s like exactly what McFunkypants said up there… o_O
Sorry for double post, but I guess it goes to show that it DOES actually happen

By: krangGAMES

krangGAMES — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:28:43 +0000

I actually got bit a little while back for using a WASD format for movement in game. It was a Flash game, and for some reason its popularity exploded in Russia (I think?), or somewhere where people were using AZERTY keyboards a lot. Probably don’t need to worry about it, but something to think about it. If it’s not too difficult, including multiple formats for your controls is awesome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY

By: Zr40

Zr40 — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:15:57 +0000

Dvorak is simple too: , A O E = up left down right

By: Olofson

Olofson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:11:49 +0000

…except that doesn’t help with Dvorak.

Either way, I suggest supporting the arrow keys as a backup. They may be in the wrong end of the keyboard for some players, but at least, they’re not randomly spread all over the place.

By: Breakdance McFunkypants

Breakdance McFunkypants — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:03:07 +0000

WASD on intl keyboards IS possible! There is a really nice solution for people who want to use the common w,a,s,d movement keys for their games that works on international keyboards:

W,A,S,D = up,left,down,right

*AND*

Z,Q,S,D = up,left,down,right

No keyboard detection required, these can both be implemented concurrently!

See this image for details:

http://www.mcfunkypants.com/molehill/controls.png

By: matthias_zarzecki

matthias_zarzecki — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:26:33 +0000

Sure, we call it “setting up the pipeline”. Getting all the folders ready and making sure that all programs work might take a few hours, after all.

By: AzP

AzP — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:51:23 +0000

Great post! I’m GNU/Linux only, but I’ll probably find a way of doing a Windows build somehow. Feel very limiting to do a GNU/Linux-only release.
The horrible PITA of setting of a working build-system on both Windows and GNU/Linux could probably ruin a whole day of programming, so it’s probably worth-while to do that at least a day before launch. That is permitted, right? Building framework, empty project files, etc etc?

By: ericdpitts

ericdpitts — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:04:10 +0000

Great list, thanks for taking the time to put it together (and the time to play and rate 600 games last time!), you’re awesome. I won’t be able to get a web build this time, but I’m going to go that route for the next LD. And I’ll definitely keep international keyboards in mind, that had never even occurred to me before.

By: uncade

uncade — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:14:03 +0000

I hadn’t ever thought of the international keyboards porblems, thanks a lot!

By: matthias_zarzecki

matthias_zarzecki — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:14:55 +0000

Why thank you. The resulting insanity from a 600-games-binge was quite pleasant

By: johnfn

johnfn — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:36:51 +0000

The post is great, but I just want to say that you are my hero for voting on 600 games last time. That is mind blowing.

By: nickfla1

nickfla1 — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:30:04 +0000

Really useful! Thanks

By: SusanTheCat

SusanTheCat — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:34:41 +0000

Great Do’s and Don’ts! Thank you

By: Hazard

Hazard — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:58:27 +0000

Sure you can, but implementing key mapping costs precious time. And noone wants to remap keys for every single game.