itch.io

This happens to me sometimes. Sometimes windows only allows a program to run across fewer cores. You want to make sure that your cpu is fully utilized, and I'll explain how.

If you hop onto Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + ESC, and where it says "Apps", you want to right click on whatever the game your running is and click "Go to details." Once you do that, the app will be highlighted, right click the highlighted app and select "Set affinity." This opens up a list of all your CPU's cores, if it's not performing well, it'll only show CPU 0 and CPU 1 checked. You wanna click the check box labeled "<All Processors>", then click OK. This makes it so the app you're using will run across your entire CPU, making performance much better.

Hope this helped!

P.S. Task Manager can be a dangerous app if you try to mess around with things. If you try toggling and setting things you don't what they do, I highly suggest you only use and change things you know will work and won't break anything. I highly doubt anything in task manager can break things, but I'm sure there's still a risk of something happening if you mess around enough. I've done the Set affinity setting thousands of times and it's always made games perform better. 

Hello! I've seen lots of different game pages for lots of different games here, and I wanted to ask the community: What do you think is the best way to make a good first impression with your game's page? What are some good examples of what a game page should look like? How should they be formatted? What are your best practices for making your game page pop out?

Thanks!

great! thank you so much! i'll take a look at the game :)

Hi! So I've been working on this idea of mine for the past month or two and a lot of times I've blanked on what I'm going to do for certain areas of the game, whether it be game mechanics, story-line, etc. If you don't mind reading a good majority of this post, or maybe even all, would be great so you can give me the best possible feedback! So my question is, what's an efficient way to make sure that my game idea is a balance between challenging, engaging and fun? My game idea is based off of another game that was super hyped up during release, then the devs just took the money and ran. So i guess you could say I'm making it off of the idea of that game, but with my own spin to it. It's a god game where you can build a society, keep them happy, and make sure it continues to grow. 

If you're in the mood to read the rest below, then go ahead now. But if you don't want to, you can leave your answers to the title in the comments. Thanks!

In the game I'm taking inspiration off of, you can mold the land however you please, and molding the lands will create plots for your people to build houses. The game had a currency called "Belief", and after a period of time, a little bubble would appear on top of a house to be collected. You could use belief for different things, you used belief when you sculpted the land, or used any sort of power to make whatever you touched happier or sadder. As time went on, the people got sadder, and when the whole village was sad enough, you would lose some of the population to a rivaling villager nearby that was much happier then your civilization. So you had to make sure your villagers were happier then the rivaling village so your people wouldn't get jealous and leave you for them. There's a lot more to the game but obviously going into larger detail would be counterproductive.

My game would have a similar aspect to it, other then the terrain molding and automatically drawing plots for the people to build in. (you can look it up, it's called Godus. It's on steam, but it's mainly a mobile game. It's very fun, I highly recommend it if your into god games.) One thing Godus didn't have is collecting resources. You kinda just had to send a little person nearby the open plot to build there. No strings attached; other then waiting for the person to build it. I feel like in my game, to make it more grind-y and less idle-y. There would always be something to do or to distract you with and keep you engaged. Most of the time in Godus, you had to wait for something to be completed. Which is typical for a mobile game. But, in my game, I feel like you can always be doing something, but you don't always have to. Of course, to keep the game interesting there would be certain events that would pop up that would make sure the player is engaged and active. Something along the lines of that.

If you have any ideas, feedback, or any kinds comments, I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much for reading! :)

holy crap this comment thread is old as all hell

got it, thanks!

awesome, thank you so much for the suggestion!!

thank you so much!! this helps a lot!

I've been planning my dream game for a while now, and I don't feel I'm doing it right. I use Microsoft's OneNote, so finding a program to write down my thoughts and organize them hasn't really been a problem, but the real problem is what I should write down so I can approach development of the game without any problems with colliding ideas or whatever. 

I originally told myself to explain it to myself in different layers of detail, for example: first, I would write how I would explain it to someone in a brief way, but still including some detail. Then, I would describe it like I would in a game page, with detail but slightly brief. Then I would explain it in lots of detail, breaking down each part of the game and leave no detail out. (except for some extra info that obviously isn't crucial to planning)

I've been trying to do that, but recently I've gotten too lazy and just written any ideas about any factor of that came into my head. I'm back and forth on what I think will be the easier/better way to get my thoughts out and plan everything efficiently. Planning everything in bulk, or writing different things that pop into my head and compiling it all when I feel it's enough to start development.

My question is for those who have had the same problem as me, what did you do? What should I do? I'm open to suggestions of all kind! 

Thank you all!

This is a problem I run into very often with the itch.io client. It's perfect, but the autocorrect doesn't work. Or, there just is no autocorrect. The red underline indicating a typo, but when you right click on it, a drop-down menu appears, but no autocorrect! It's only Cut, Copy, and Paste.

Now, I could just learn to spell and/or type better, but that's too tedious and it wouldn't be technology if I couldn't do everything without needing to put any effort into anything. 

I'm sure Google has some autocorrect/spell check API the itch.io devs could some how implement into the text editor, and if they did, that would be so helpful!

among us drip

What was your first experience in game dev communities?

My first experience with communities was Game Jolt for a couple of months, then I moved here to itch.io. A game dev community is something that I'm very proud to be a part of and I've gained lots of wisdom and knowledge from frequently making posts to the itch.io forums. If you have a problem, there are people willing to help who may have either had the same problem or straight up want to help you fix it. I've also asked some people to share their feedback with one of my older games which steered me in the right direction and helped me a lot. 

Is it okay to share unfinished, or even just started, showcases and projects?

Whatever the project's state may be, whatever you feel comfortable with, you should do. I'm working on a new game that I haven't even written a line of code for, it's still just an idea. But one thing I do not recommend doing, is releasing an unfinished, rushed game. You should always take your time when making a game. As I always say, quality > quantity. But if you have an idea you're passionate about and want to make into a game, share it! People will provide feedback, or maybe even changes to make it the best idea possible!

How should I go about finding people who might be interested to work with me who have different skills, such as artists?

There are literally thousands of people on itch.io alone that are looking for jobs, especially artists. The best/fastest place to find a worker or someone to help you is on Discord. There are hundreds of game dev servers on Discord. I'm in dozens of game dev servers myself, and if I run into a problem, I've found someone who helped me fix it right away. It's very rare that you don't find someone, and anyone can at any price. Sometime people will work for free!

Would it make sense to record "making of" my first games, and share on Tubes? Is it wasted effort until I get a better grip on the whole process, or can it help prepare for a possible launch?

I can only imagine you're talking about posting dev logs to YouTube, and if you're passionate about it, then you should do it! It takes time, and it's a fun little side project. It can also lead to more people finding your channel and it can build up some hype and get more sales! It's a very efficient marketing method. Tons of devs do it! Big and small.

I wish you luck on your game dev adventures! I'm 16 and I just started making some games of my own. :)

Great, thank you so much! I'll keep those processes in mind.

Thank you so much. This helped a lot!

So, I've posted to the itch.io forums a lot and I never know where I'm really supposed to post this. If I posted this in the wrong thread, I'm sure mods can just move it.

I recently started working on my first 3D game, and one of the things I've never done in a game is 3D model. I don't know how to use blender and I'm not looking into spending money on tutorials or different 3D modeling programs. I also don't know if I want to hire someone because the last time I worked with someone on an idea we both had, our ideas clashed and we had different views on what the game should be. I have these questions for devs who have been in the same boat as me when it comes to learning how/what to 3D modeling. 

1. What did you do if you knew you wanted to model something, but didn't know how to make it or just make it look good?
2. Was learning how to 3D model things yourself hard/worth it?
3. This goes along with question 1, how did you gain inspiration, or know what you wanted to 3D model?

I know that most of these depend on how creative you are, or how easy one can learn how to do something new, but if you guys have any advice, please share it! I'd love to hear anything from anyone!

Thank you for the advice! I feel like I don't have the time for game jams, so I guess a good compromise would to be dabbling in some test projects to learn more, kinda like a game jam where you make something simple in a short period of time.

...am i the one who's high or are you high..?

Thank you so much!! This helps a lot.

So, I've been working on my new game for a couple of months now, and it's my first ever game on this platform and on Unity, and it wasn't really something I was looking into making it a really big game, it was kinda a test game. It's more on the simple side, and I made it that way on purpose so I could ease into learning Unity and other things related to game dev. The thing is, it's getting pretty boring, my code is messy from my coding habits changing, and just moments where I was super lazy. I feel my ambition isn't this game, only because I know that this is a game that I would have to take a very long time to turn it into something remotely successful. I know, success takes time, effort, and maybe even good fortune, idk. My main point is, I don't feel like this game is the best I can do. I just want to make something cooler then a 2D game that isn't very pleasing to the eye or isn't any fun at all.
The reason I made this post was to ask anyone who's experienced what I'm experiencing now, what should I do? What did you do, and was it a good call?

SquareScape Alpha

well, the reason why anti-viruses always block game downloads from itch.io is because itch.io is a source that most anti-virus mark as an "unknown location," so they block the downloads just to be safe. this doesn't happen for platforms like Steam because Steam requires you to pay for uploading a game, and it's also a trusted source.

yeah that makes sense. thank you!

yeah it think it'll look sus with and/or without it lol

great! thank you!

Sorry idk if this belongs in this section.

I've had my game out for a little over a month and a big number of those people view the game page and don't download the game. My game isn't a super complex game, it's just a simple 2D game that would probably do better as an HTML5 game then a downloadable game. So my question is for people that have games similar to mine, have you seen more success in having your game run in HTML5 then the players having to download the game?

Thanks!

Awesome! Thank you so much for the feedback. I am currently working on an update that will add new guns and new enemies and a new game mode, and now I'll look into zooming out the camera!

awesome, thanks for the feedback!

yep same

uh sure i guess

I released this game around a month ago and I'm still working very hard on it, and I'd like it to get some more attention so I can get feedback on how I can make it better! This game is kinda my test game, so I'm not gonna be working on this forever but I'd like feedback on it. Thanks!

https://chez-dev.itch.io/squarescape

game is big good 👍